


It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

by MaryPSue



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Complete, Gen, Long, Post-Canon, hints of Jareth/Sarah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-15
Packaged: 2017-11-25 02:07:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 40,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/633964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah is woken in the middle of the night by a knock on her door. Suddenly, she finds herself thrust back into a fairy-story, with the most unlikely of allies at her side. But Sarah's forgotten that fairy tales can be cruel. With her little brother's future on the line, she will be forced to make a choice - and, once again, learn the hard way to be careful what you wish for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Sarah was rudely awakened by an imperious knocking at her door.

"Urgh. Who could that be?" she mumbled, still not fully awake, as she rolled over to check her bedside clock. The discovery of the time was sobering enough to wake her up some. "Four in the morning?! What kind of idiot comes around knocking on people's doors in the pouring rain at four in the morning?"

Sarah rolled over again and buried her head beneath her pillow, determined to go back to sleep. But the knocking persisted, and Sarah got the feeling, from the commanding, impatient tone of the knock, that whoever was outside her door would stand there all night if they had to.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming," Sarah grumbled, rolling over again, severely tangling the sheets around her legs, and threw the switch for her bedside light. Nothing happened. Sarah flicked the switch up and down a few times, but got nothing. Either the bulb had burnt out, or her power was out, which seemed more likely in the current thunderstorm.

Mumbling curses against the electrical board, thunderstorms, and electricity in general, Sarah slunk slowly across her darkened room to the closet, on the door handle of which hung her robe. She banged her shins three times walking over there in the dark, each time letting loose with an obscenity. She'd never really conquered her childhood habit of keeping pretty trinkets and things lying around (although God knows she'd tried after that run-in with the Magwitch), and so, she had more than one little low table or dresser artistically placed right where she was likely to bang into it in the dark. Every time she cracked her shins, the object on which she'd injured herself would rattle ominously, and Sarah would have to hope that nothing had fallen off and been broken. Throughout all of this, the knocking persisted, and Sarah suddenly felt very much inclined to leave whoever it was outside until a decent hour, knocking away in the rain, unnoticed.

_But what if it's_ – she thought, then brushed the thought away. Alex wasn't exactly the brightest crayon in the box, Sarah was forced to admit, but even he wasn't so dumb as to come knocking so late – or early, depending on how you looked at it. Besides, he was so vain that he wouldn't risk getting his hair wet. And, of course, Alex had a key. He wouldn't be wasting time knocking.

Sarah paused for a moment to wonder why she was even bothering to see someone so vain and stupid. Since she'd always been after a fairy-tale prince, she supposed she'd only gotten what she deserved. But sometimes, she wondered if she really wanted him at all, really wanted to marry him and chain herself to him until death did them part. Not to mention, she'd have to sell her house. It was a tiny old place, full of bad insulation and wiring (Sarah cursed the electrical board again), but it had a certain charm that made her loathe to part with it.

But that was beside the point. There was no reason for Alex to be knocking on her door. And Jamie, though she'd gotten herself into a few scrapes in the past, had been walking the straight and narrow for a few years now. It seemed unlikely that she'd be the one knocking. _So,_ thought Sarah as she tied the belt on her robe, _that leaves Toby. And for his sake, I hope it isn't._

A sudden flash of lightning illuminated the hall as Sarah opened her door, wondering what could have happened to bring Toby to her door this early in the morning. She knew high school kids were notorious for partying (although she'd never really experienced it herself); hopefully he'd come here as some sort of precaution or something. She'd rather have Toby knocking at her door because the designated driver had forgotten he was designated or something like that than have Toby puking – or worse, hurt – on her doorstep.

_Wait. Toby has a key, doesn't he?_

Despite the darkness, Sarah hurried down the stairs, wincing every time she missed one. If someone was having to knock – no, that couldn't be. Toby had probably forgotten his key, that was all. She had to admit, it was quite like him.

The knocking had become louder and more impatient, with a side order of irritated, by the time she actually got to the door. Sarah consoled herself and steadied her nerves by thinking, If it was bad, they would be desperate, not just pissed off. "All right, I'm coming, I'm coming," she shouted over the pounding on her door and the sudden roll of thunder. She stopped to retie her belt, which had come undone during her slip-slide down the stairs, undid the deadbolt, and opened the door.

A sudden flash of lightning traced, in light and shadow, the last face she'd been expecting to see.

"May I come in?" asked her stepmother.


	2. Chapter 2

"Can I get you anything? Tea? Crackers?" Sarah blustered, walking awkwardly around the kitchen, lighting candles as she went. Her stepmother sat, perfectly composed, in one of Sarah's 'vintage' kitchen chairs, at the table that had once been a butcher's block. Sarah had no idea what would lead Irene to her humble abode at this heinous hour, but she was reasonably sure that it wasn't a social visit. Still, Sarah would feel even more awkward than she did now if she didn't treat Irene with anything but extreme politeness. The two of them had never really got on, and now that Sarah was no longer living under her stepmother's roof, she really didn't want to come across as the same spoiled brat she'd been as a teenager. If she and Irene had a real fight now, Sarah might never talk to her stepmother (or, by association, her father or stepbrother) again. So she always was on her best behaviour around Irene, despite the fact that it seemed to make Irene slightly suspicious. "I'm sorry; the cupboard's a bit bare at the moment."

"No, thank you," Irene replied, her voice slightly cold. "I'll just take Toby home. Really, Sarah, you could at least have called to say he was here. I was worried sick!"

Sarah stopped in her tracks. "Toby's not here," she said. "I thought he was at home."

"Oh, so he left already?" Irene asked, her tone icy.

"No. I mean that he hasn't been here at all. I thought that it was him knocking at my door like that at four o'clock in the morning," Sarah said, unable to keep a hint of reproach from her voice. "Is he all right?"

Irene's face was a picture, and not the kind usually hung in a hallway to improve the decor.

Sarah backtracked immediately. "I'm sorry, that was the wrong thing to ask. I'll just..."

But whatever she'd been about to say, and even she didn't know, was abruptly interrupted. "He wanted to go out tonight," Irene said softly, every word ringing clear as a bell in the rain-haunted quiet of the kitchen. "There was some sort of party at one of his friends' house. We were going out, and you know I don't like Toby to not be able to call us should he need us."

Sarah found the suggestion that Irene buy a cell phone hovering about the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed it. Now was not the time. Instead, she said, "You know he can always call me."

"Yes, well..." Irene said, letting the unspoken disapproval drown out the sound of the thunderstorm. "So I asked him to stay in tonight."

_I bet there was a flaming row,_ Sarah thought, mentally filling in the blanks. _I'll bet it ended in you both yelling, "Fine!" in entirely the wrong tones and Toby slamming his door._ But, since she'd learned a little about tact through a few years in the real world, she said only, "I see."

"So we went out."

_You would. You left me home with Toby after I threw a temper tantrum, and I nearly lost him to the goblins. I'm sure you had no idea I'd do that, but still._

"We didn't get back until, oh, about midnight. And, well, Toby..."

"Wasn't there?" Sarah finished for her.

Irene sighed. "No, he wasn't. Naturally, I thought he'd gone to this party of his anyway, and I was a little upset, but well, it's good that he has so many friends, so I was prepared to go a little easy on him. So we sat up waiting for him for about an hour, and then I went looking."

"Where did you look?" Sarah asked, ignoring the seemingly innocuous comment about Toby's friends. She wasn't going to go there, not now, not under these circumstances.

Irene nervously patted her perfectly coiffed hair. "I went to the stupid party, I tried each of his friends' houses, I even went to the skate park, even though I know he only goes there if one of his friends drags him along."

"And you came here last?" Sarah would never admit it, but she felt a bit slighted.

"Truth be told, I didn't even think of your place until I'd gone by it twice. I know you told Toby he could come here if he ever needed a place to stay, but I guess I just don't think of you like that." Irene laughed. "I suppose that in my mind you're still the little girl who threw a fit every time we asked you to mind the baby."

Sarah laughed too. It wasn't funny, at all, but something had to be done to relieve the tension. "Heh. Well. I'd still rather Toby didn't have to stay here, but he's welcome anytime. Now. Where else might he be?"

Irene shrugged. Sarah could see that her stepmother was on the verge of tears, and this almost shocked her. She'd always seen Irene as an iron lady, unbreakable and definitely unbendable. This was new.

"I don't know where else to look," Irene confessed, softly.

"Um. Okay. Well, I'll, uh, try calling Toby's cell phone, and, um..." Sarah found herself at a loss for words. Truth be told, she had no idea where to look for Toby either. If his phone was off, then Sarah was stumped. The hopelessness of the situation was really getting to her. She needed to get out of this strangely bright, suddenly stuffy kitchen, needed to go somewhere and not panic and clear her head. "I'll just go and phone him," Sarah said quickly, despite the fact that there was a phone in the kitchen. She grabbed a candle from the counter and strode determinedly out of the kitchen, slowing down only when the flame started to flicker. She really didn't feel like bruising her shins on anything else tonight.

Sarah walked down the hall until she found the phone, hanging on the wall where it always was, and then leaned heavily against the wall. It was all just too much, too early in the morning. Way too early in the morning.

She took a deep breath, gathered her composure, and picked up the receiver, only to be met with dead silence. Frowning, Sarah replaced the handset, then picked it up again, to hear once again the complete absence of a dial tone.

_Are the phone lines down too? That's strange._

Sarah wasn't ready to go back into the kitchen and tell Irene that the phone lines were down, and, as such, they had no way of contacting Toby. They'd have to think of something else to do instead of sitting around quietly having hysterics in the weird shadows cast by flickering candlelight. She took a deep breath and slowly blew it out, thinking hard. It didn't make sense. Where else would Toby go? Where else could he go?

And she nearly jumped out of her skin when a voice she hadn't heard in nearly fifteen years said, "Milady!"

Sarah looked around the hall, which suddenly looked bigger and emptier than it had mere moments ago. There was nothing hiding in the dancing shadows but, then again, how could you be sure?

By chance, her gaze fell on the full-length mirror that hung just across the hall from her current position. And she stifled a little scream – not of terror or stress this time, but delight.

"Sir Didymus?"

The little knight was standing on the reflection of Sarah's hall table. He looked quite agitated. Sarah couldn't see his loyal but easily frightened steed Ambrosius anywhere, and assumed that the sheepdog was simply too scared of the lightning and thunder to show his face. Out of habit, Sarah looked beside her at the hall table. Of course, there was no one there.

She turned back to the mirror. "Didymus! It is you! I haven't seen you in..."

"Fifteen years, milady," he said, a shade reproachfully. "But no matter! This is no time for trifles! We must make haste!"

"Make haste to what?" Sarah asked, increasingly confused. She was talking to someone in a mirror. Any minute now, Irene would hear, would come out of the kitchen, and would see this little tableau. And what would she think?

"To the castle, fair lady! She's taken him! There is no time to waste!"

"Wait, who? Toby?"

"Indeed, milady, indeed! Now will you hurry it up?"

Sarah looked around wildly. She could barely believe it. It had been so long, sometimes she even thought it had only been a dream. But then she'd remember, the way his eyes had flashed, the cold water on the walls, the sheer terror in the pit of her stomach thinking that she might be too late, and she thought: _no._ It was all real. In fact, that was the only reason that, at this moment, she still thought she was sane. It seemed completely reasonable that someone would come back for Toby. Hadn't she almost been expecting it? Right now, there was only one obstacle keeping her from dashing wildly off to rescue him again.

"Okay, sure," she told Sir Didymus. "Um, how?"

Didymus paused. As Sarah recalled, he'd never been the best at strategy. Brave as a lion, of course, but...well, he didn't exactly plan ahead.

"Did I not say?"

"No."

"Oh. But I was sure - "

"You didn't say how, Sir Didymus."

"Ah. Well, it's really quite simple. All you have to do is step through. It's after that that it gets hard."

"Sarah?" Irene called from the kitchen. Sarah froze. Drat! If she went off now, she had no idea what Irene would think had happened, but she knew it wouldn't be good. "Sarah, who are you talking to?"

"Step through what?" Sarah hissed at the knight.

"Why, through the mirror, of course," Didymus said, unfortunately in a clear and carrying voice. This was answered by the scrape of a chair on the scarred linoleum of Sarah's kitchen floor. Irene was coming to see what was going on.

Sarah examined the mirror carefully. She'd bought it and installed it herself. There was no secret passageway or anything, just bare wall. There was no way through it, nothing behind it. She ought to know. 

Then, she slapped herself, loudly, on the forehead. "What am I doing?" she whispered. "I'm thinking like a sensible, rational adult!"

She put a foot up on the ornate gold frame of the mirror, then hesitated. If she went through it, would her reflection get out and wreak havoc on her life? Would she and her reflection merge? Would her reflection just disappear?

Footsteps from the kitchen made up her mind for her. As Irene turned the corner from the kitchen into the hall, Sarah took a deep breath and a step through the mirror. Irene's cry of, "Sarah, what on Earth?" was partially drowned out as Sarah pushed through the mirror's half-hearted resistance. It was like jumping into a pool of cold water; once past the surface, you adjusted until you couldn't tell you were underwater.

"Oh, well done, well done!" Sir Didymus congratulated her as she emerged, blinking, into what, now that she saw it from the other side, wasn't exactly a faithful reflection of her hall. "I told them that you still had it in you, but - "

Whatever Sir Didymus had been about to say was cut short as Sarah interrupted him, something her ears had heard finally catching up with her brain. "Wait a minute. What do you mean, 'she'?"

Didymus didn't answer. Instead, he pointed at something behind Sarah. "Er...milady..."

Sarah whirled around, bringing her nearly nose-to-nose with the angry and bewildered face of her stepmother, half in, half out of the mirror.


	3. Chapter 3

Linda Williams knew her daughter was safe.

It had been the one thing that had kept her sane through the long years, looking back on her life, wondering where her small family was now, how her husband was coping, how her daughter was getting on in school and in life, how Robert and Sarah thought of her now. Linda would be near tears, fully ready to despair, but then she'd remember that whatever the consequences, Sarah was safe. No matter what happened to Linda, he couldn't touch Sarah anymore.

This she knew. It came as quite a surprise to find that it wasn't true at all.

When Sarah began the dance that Linda had never left, when mother saw daughter robed in the sparkling gown and jewels that were twins of the ones that Linda herself wore, the design stolen from the music box that had been the only thing Linda had been able to leave for Sarah and Sarah alone, her heart broke right in two. She sought him out in the crowd, the gentleman with the thistle-down hair, the Goblin King. She had it in her mind to tell him off, to lecture him, to shout at him, to break up the party and make him see the error of his ways. But she didn't find him. She knew he was there, could feel his insidious presence like a worm at the heart of the tower, but she couldn't see him.

And when he finally let her find him, they were dancing. The Goblin King and Sarah. Her daughter.

Linda wanted to scream. But all she could do was laugh.

But maybe Sarah noticed her presence somehow. Maybe she heard her mother's silent screams. Or maybe the girl was just smart. Whatever the case, Sarah somehow broke away from the Goblin King's embrace, somehow fought her way through the crowd and somehow, impossibly, broke through the spell.

Linda tried to follow, but, for her, the fight was over and the ballroom was an unsolvable labyrinth in itself. She didn't find the place where Sarah had broken through until it was too late. The wall and the spell were sealed, and no chair thrown by Linda would break through them again.

She sought him out again. This time, the dance was done, the fun was over, and she found him easily, sprawled on a couch with pretty, masked, possibly illusory girls swarming around him. She wanted to shout, to spit in his eye, to hit him square in the face, to sweep aside his harem and beat him black and blue. But she couldn't. She'd lost that power years ago.

So, instead, she gently shunted aside a rather plump specimen of goblin royalty and took her place on the couch, beside him. When she spoke, Linda's tones were modulated and almost adoring, although the message was full of venom. "I thought we had a bargain. One Williams girl for another."

The Goblin King absentmindedly ran a few strands of her hair through his black-gloved fingers. "Linda, Linda, Linda," he sighed. "You know I'm a liar. Besides, your daughter has a mind all her own. She's fair game."

"We had a bargain."

"No, you had a bargain. Now I have you. And soon, I'll have your daughter and her blushing baby brother to decorate the place with as well." He gazed around the beautiful crystal prison with a look of disdain.

"Bouncing. Babies are bouncing. Brides are blushing," Linda corrected him. Inside, her anger had been shunted aside by a more pressing problem. What baby brother?

"Well, it won't matter. In a little under an hour, they'll both be my subjects."

"No, they won't. Sarah's already - " Linda began, then bit off the rest of the sentence. She would not be responsible for sabotaging what could be her daughter's only chance for escape. " – fifteen," she finished. "To old for you to take unless she makes a bargain or bows to you."

"Which she'll do." His thin, handsome lips curled into something resembling a frown. "I'll admit, she's been a bit of a nuisance, but she's just like you at heart." He sneered, contorting his normally very handsome face into an ugly mask. "A fairy-tale princess. She doesn't stand a chance."

"You're wrong," Linda said softly, before she even realized she'd said anything. "You're so wrong. She's got a core of solid steel. No, iron. She'll put paid to you and your fairy magic."

The Goblin King really looked at her for the first time. "You actually believe that, don't you? Why? What proof do you have?"

Linda swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat. "She's already broken out of your spell."

"Straight into another. Let me assure you, your daughter will not be troubling me."

Linda's heart plummeted. Without another traitorous word, she got up off the sofa and began to walk sedately away.

Behind her, she heard the Goblin King sigh heavily, as if in disappointment. She turned just in time to see him vanish in a shower of sparkles.

Linda wanted to stamp her foot in anger, or, better yet, fracture the wall and break out of this cotton-candy world, run off to chase something that wasn't a dream. But, instead, she kept walking until she collided softly with a handsome masked man, who turned and asked her to dance.

As always, Linda Williams said yes.


	4. Chapter 4

Sarah squeaked and jumped backwards as Irene pushed her way through the mirror into the reflection. She looked very put out.

"Really! I suppose it hadn't occurred to you that we were in the middle of something important? Have you no consideration? Your brother is missing!"

Sarah was about to snap back, then saw Irene's obvious agitation, and realised with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that, right now, she was her stepmother's last hope. Now was really not the time.

"I'm sorry," she replied, once her heart had stopped beating a mile a minute. "But this is important. Sir Didymus might know where Toby is."

Irene turned, and seemed to notice the knight for the first time. She blinked rapidly, as if trying to clear something from her eyes. "Sarah?" she queried.

Sir Didymus' eyes locked onto Irene's, and then, without breaking his gaze, he swept a low bow. "Sir Didymus, valiant knight and defender of the Labyrinth – and beautiful ladies," he added with a wink, "at your service."

Without taking her eyes off of him, Irene took a cautious step backwards. "Sarah," she stated authoritatively, "there's a talking dog on your hall table."

It was all Sarah could do not to burst into a fit of mad giggles. "I know," she managed to say in a semi-calm and level tone of voice. "He's an old friend of mine. And it's not exactly my hall table."

"Well, whose is it, than?" Irene demanded.

 _Rein in that temper before it gets out of hand,_ Sarah scolded herself. _Irene's never been within ten feet of a goblin and she doesn't believe in fairy tales. This is going to be an uphill battle, but I am going to keep my temper!_ "We're inside a mirror at the moment," she said aloud. "It's not exactly my house."

"No, it most certainly is not! If your house was in the Borderlands, well…" Didymus shook his head. "Better not to think of that."

Irene looked around, seeming to notice the length of the hallway and the shadows gathered in its farthest corners for the first time. "Is it dangerous?"

"Oh yes. Very dangerous," Sir Didymus began. A sudden look of panic crossed Irene's face, and he hastily amended, "for those who don't know what they're doing. But you, my ladies, have a guide!"

"Sir Didymus, where's Hoggle? And Ludo? They're all right, aren't they?" Sarah asked, her anxiety for Toby momentarily overshadowed by other concerns.

"Oh yes, Sirs Ludo and Hoggle are both quite well. In fact, my brother Ludo is waiting at the border to aid our crossing."

"And Hoggle?"

Sir Didymus seemed reluctant to say anything more, until Sarah glared him down. "You know I'll find out eventually, and if it's bad, I'll be more upset than if you just told me."

"He's keeping guard on your baby brother, in case she tries to spirit him away to…er, somewhere else."

Sarah was taken aback. "What? But – isn't that in the castle? But he's always been so frightened of Jareth. What changed?"

"I believe Sir Hoggle did, milady, thanks in no small part to you."

Sarah found that she was impressed by her friend's bravery. "So. Why would we need help crossing the border?"

Didymus waved his staff dramatically. Irene took a few more cautious steps back. "The border patrol have become a little…overzealous in their protection of the Underground. But no matter! We shall fight them to the death! Hah!" He swung out wildly with his staff. Irene and Sarah both ducked.

"All right! All right. I know you could fight any border guard and win, Sir Didymus," Sarah admonished him gently. "Look, I don't understand. When I went through the Labyrinth, there weren't any border guards. I just walked right in."

"Ah, but that was just the Labyrinth, milady," Sir Didymus said sagely, lowering his staff. Irene breathed a sigh of relief. "The Goblin King took you straight into the Underground. He has – well, had – the authority to bypass the border. But you're on your own this time, so we must fight our way through!" He brandished his staff at thin air again.

At this point, Irene, who had been following Sarah and Didymus' conversation with growing bewilderment, interrupted. "I'm sure this is very pressing and important, but could either of you take a moment to explain to me exactly what is going on here?"

Sarah could have kicked herself. Once again, she'd selfishly focused on herself and hadn't even noticed anyone else's distress – a habit she'd tried even harder to break than the habit of keeping piles of trinkets lying around. She considered explaining everything, than realised that she didn't even remotely know where to start. "What do you want to know?"

"Well, first, what's this Underground you two keep talking about? Some kind of slave trade?"

"No, fair lady," Sir Didymus replied. "It is the home of a great many mysterious, quite magical, and occasionally exasperating creatures. I believe you call it 'Fairyland'?"

Irene wrinkled her brow. "Fairies? Sweet little people with wings?"

"Oh no, those are pixies. And they're anything but sweet." Sarah grimaced at the recollection. "They bite something fierce."

"And if they sense you are dying, they will take you off to their nest to feed their young. Of course, sometimes they don't wait for you to die first…"Sir Didymus let the sentence trail off. Sarah got the feeling that, had Irene been slightly more crass, she would have stuck out her tongue in disgust. As it was, she maintained an admirably straight face.

"And you say these things took Toby?"

"No. She's taken him, into the very centre of the Labyrinth."

Irene turned to Sarah. "This wouldn't be the same Labyrinth you were always going on about, would it?"

Sarah nodded. "I think they're one and the same."

Her stepmother's face momentarily revealed just how out of her depth she actually was.

Sarah sighed. "Do you remember when I was fifteen and I got home and hour late and it was pouring rain and I threw a tantrum and you and Dad wanted to go out somewhere and you left me to watch Toby? He wasn't eighteen months old yet, I think."

"Sarah, it might be easier if you tried to point out an occasion on which you were home on time and cheerfully suggested that we go out while you stayed home with Toby."

Sarah had to admit that this was true. "Well, when you came home, I'd put away all the pictures of my mother and I didn't talk about goblins or fairies for nearly two weeks. Do you remember that?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. I thought it quite odd, but I was proud of you for making the effort to grow up. But I don't see what that has got to do with any of this." Irene waved an arm broadly, the gesture encompassing Sir Didymus, the mirror, and the shadow-hung halls.

"Everything," Sarah replied. "Because after you two left, I kind of…wished for the goblins to take Toby away. And they did." Seeing the look on Irene's face, she hastily added, "I got him back! I solved the Labyrinth in thirteen hours, with Sir Didymus and Ludo and Hoggle helping me, and I got Toby back. I never told you or Dad. I knew you wouldn't believe me."

"But why is he gone now?" Irene asked, lack of sleep and utter confusion most probably contributing to the utter lack of patience implicit in her voice.

Sarah shrugged.

Sir Didymus cleared his throat. "I believe that I may be able to shed some light on this matter, fair lady." He bowed again, a sweeping gesture that ended with his nose nearly touching his knees and one arm extended grandly behind him. Sarah stifled another fit of giggles. "After Sarah left the Labyrinth, the Lords and Ladies – the other rulers of the Underground kingdoms – decided that the Goblin King wasn't up to the task of ruling the Labyrinth any longer. But, being mostly goblins and elves themselves, they were much too lazy to actually do anything about it. Besides, I personally think that all of the Ladies have something of a soft spot for Jareth…"

"Is this still the same person?" Irene asked.

"Yes," Sarah replied. "Jareth is the Goblin King. He rules -"

"Er, ruled," Sir Didymus interjected.

"– the Labyrinth," Sarah finished. "He was the one I had to defeat to get Toby back."

Irene gave her a look of disbelief, mingled with a hint of admiration. Sarah beamed delightedly.

"Yes. Well, a little while ago, this…woman showed up in the Labyrinth," Sir Didymus continued. "She wasn't one of the goblins. In fact, we think she may even be human. But, at any rate, she told the Lords and Ladies the most astonishing tales about Jareth!" Sir Didymus shook his head disapprovingly. "Our king may have had his faults, but there are limits! Whatever happened to loyalty? To honour? To -"

"Sir Didymus!"

"Yes?"

"Continue with the story, please."

"Oh. Yes. I beg your pardon, milady! This woman came out of nowhere, and once she had the Lords and Ladies on her side, she returned to the Labyrinth and she deposed the Goblin King." These last five words were delivered in a hush, as if they were too terrible to speak. Sarah found that she almost agreed with that sentiment.

"How in the world did she do that?"

"No one knows, milady, no one knows! She went into the throne room, and when she came out, she had the medallion of office around her neck. The first thing she did was have Jareth imprisoned. He didn't even try to put up a fight!"

Sarah, despite fifteen years of denial, suddenly felt sorry for the now ex-Goblin King. The mental image of the person she'd been terrified of and partially in love with for most of her young life cowed and broken by someone else was almost too awful for words.

"Good," Irene stated definitely.

"Good?" Sarah and Didymus asked, almost in unison.

"Yes. Good. From what I've heard here, this Jareth wasn't a particularly good king, and an even worse man."

Sarah and Sir Didymus exchanged a look. How to explain…

"Not exactly a man, as such," Sir Didymus finally said, as tactfully as possible. "And for a kingdom of goblins, he was a perfect king."

Irene sniffed disbelievingly.

"No, really!" Sarah said loudly – possibly a little too loudly. She lowered her voice. "Goblins are lazy, stupid, spiteful, deceitful, cowardly, perpetually angry, thieving little -" Sir Didymus cleared his throat meaningfully. Sarah continued. "And Jareth is the most cunning, deceitful, and lazy of the bunch," she said, and was a little shocked by her own impudence, but then realised it was all true. "He was a natural king."

Irene's expression clearly showed what she thought of such a notion of kingship.

In a bid to change the subject, Sarah asked, "So, who is she, anyway?" Neither Sir Didymus nor Irene seemed to know what she was talking about, so she clarified. "This woman who kicked Jareth off the throne."

"No one knows, milady," Sir Didymus repeated. "She just calls herself the Queen."

"All right. So we're up against the Goblin Queen?"

"No, milady," Didymus replied darkly. "Just the Queen."

"Okayy…" Sarah turned to Irene. "Do you have any other questions?"

"Just one."

"Well, fire away."

"Where is my son?"

There was a pause.

"She's taken him to the centre of the Labyrinth, fair lady," Sir Didymus began.

"To the castle beyond the goblin city," Sarah added.

"And how do we get there?"

"'Tis a long and arduous journey," Sir Didymus stated uneasily.

"Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered," Sarah quoted. She'd memorized the damn lines, and they wouldn't leave her alone. It was almost a relief to get to say them again.

"And – perhaps – it is not the type of journey that a lady of your station would care to undertake?" Didymus suggested. The look Irene gave him was pure steel.

"If some…'Queen' has taken my son there, then there's no way I'm going to sit at home while you two try to get him back."

Sir Didymus caved immediately. "Of course not, fair lady! How could there even have been a suggestion of such a thing? But never fear! Though the trek may be long and fraught with danger, I, Sir Didymus, valiant knight of the realm, shall be your protector! And I vow that no harm shall come to you!" He bowed again, with a flourish, this time toppling head-over-heels off of the hall table. He sat up, hat firmly wedged over his eyes, and said, "I'm perfectly fine. Would someone turn on the lights?"

This time, Sarah did giggle, and immediately regretted it when both Irene and Sir Didymus glared at her. She quickly changed the subject. "So now, the only problem is how to get into the Underground."

Irene turned left, and began to stride determinedly down the corridor. Both of the other two shouted, "Stop!" and she did, turning around, and placing both hands firmly on her hips.

"Well? I thought we were going."

"We are," Sarah said, "but not that way. You never go that way!"

Sir Didymus looked up at her. "Whyever not?"

Sarah shrugged again. "I don't know. It's just something a little worm told me."

"Indeed? Well, you have been taken in by someone, milady. If you turn left in the Labyrinth, you will go straight to the castle!"

"Oh," Sarah said, feeling foolish.

"What is the way, then?" Irene asked angrily.

"Why, through the mirror, of course," Sir Didymus replied.

"Okay," said Sarah, as she put her foot up on the mirror frame again.

"No, not like that, milady!" Sir Didymus shouted, and Sarah immediately pulled her foot back down. "Do that again, and you'll become lost in a maze of reflections with no exit." With that, Sir Didymus walked over to the mirror, rapped sharply on its gold frame with his staff and yelled, "Hey! Open up!"

"Sir Didymus?" Sarah asked.

"Just a moment, milady," Didymus replied distractedly, and thumped the mirror a few times more. "Open up in the name of the King!"

"Sir Didymus!" Sarah shouted.

"Yes?"

In answer, Sarah took hold of the frame and swung the mirror away from the wall. It moved as if on hinges, and opened inwards to reveal a pastoral landscape, on which the sun appeared to be setting. About two metres away, a low wall had been erected out of what appeared to be boulders salvaged from a field or riverbed. Along its length, great black crablike creatures with blades for arms scuttled back and forth, their beady red eyes scanning the perimeter of the wall. And, off in the distance, the low and very yellow sun gleamed off of the walls of the Labyrinth.


	5. Chapter 5

Toby Williams did not believe in fairies.

Right now, he did not believe in them with the fervour others devote to believing in aliens or Elvis.

He wasn't quite sure what was going on, but as sure as heck it had nothing to do with fairies. For example, there had been no crystal palace full of masked dancers. He'd gone to Liam's party, and maybe he'd just missed hearing that it was a masquerade. And the beautiful dark-haired woman who, strangely, had reminded him of his step-sister? Well, it only made sense that she wasn't real. Toby knew, with the arrogance of a sixteen-year-old, that his sister had never been to a party in her life. And where he was now – well, Toby had no idea how to explain that away, but he was sure going to try. Obviously, it couldn't be what it looked like. That is to say, a dungeon. The faintly glittering stone walls that enclosed him on three sides and the solid iron bars on the fourth were probably...probably a trick of some sort. Or an illusion. They couldn't possibly be real.

Or maybe, he'd been slipped something at the party, some hallucinogen that was making him see his sister's bedtime stories in glorious living colour. And then, maybe the cops had come to break it up and he was in a holding cell now. Yeah. Any minute now, it'd wear off, and he'd be back to the real world. Satisfied with this logical conclusion, Toby settled back to wait.

He didn't have to wait long. Footsteps rang through the still air of the dungeon, echoing slightly off all the stone. Toby stood up again and moved closer to the bars, trying to catch a glimpse of whoever it was before they walked into the little pool of candlelight that was the only illumination in the dungeon. All he saw was a faint glimmer, as if of sequins. A few noisy footsteps later, she glided into the circle of candlelight. As before, she was alone.

She eyed Toby with a supercilious smirk, arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow, and asked, "Are you quite comfortable?"

Toby took a deep breath and tried a new approach. "Yes. I'm sorry, Officer. It won't happen again."

She looked at him for a moment, and then threw back her head and laughed uproariously. The merry tones of her laughter bounced and echoed through the dungeons, picking up strange and unpleasant undertones. Toby's hope that this would all just go away began to flicker as badly as the candle flame.

"Officer," she said, rolling the word around in her mouth, tasting it like some rare candy. "That's a new one. I've never been called that before."

Toby's conviction that this was all some strange hallucination guttered and died. "What do I call you, then?" he asked in a bored tone, trying to mask the fact that he wanted to crawl into a hole and pull the dirt back on top of him.

She smiled at him, almost too-red lips gleaming as bright as the sequins on her dress, pearly teeth whiter than the pearls in her headdress. Her sleek dark hair spilled down her back, covering the swags in the dress that should had revealed her back. Snowy white skin stood out in sharp contrast to her dark hair and startlingly bright lips. _There's no way you look like that in real life,_ Toby thought disgustedly. _You look like Snow White. Or some little kid's idea of a fairy princess. Too perfect._

Her expression flickered suddenly. Toby couldn't fathom what had changed, but she looked very amused. "You may call me the Queen."

"The Queen..." Toby repeated, as much for something to say to fill the dark, sucking silence of the dungeon as for any other reason. And a memory floated, unbidden, to the top of his mind.

_A Midsummer Night's Dream._

Even at eleven, he'd been severely unimpressed with fairy tales and fantasy and anything else that wasn't real. But Sarah had dragged him to a local production of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ anyway. Irene hadn't objected, but only because it was Shakespeare and she knew Toby would probably have to study it in school at some point, and because Sarah had paid for both tickets.

He'd hated it. It had been all people pretending to be fairies, speaking Ye Olde Englishe, and then some guy had got a donkey's head by magic and that had scared the pants off of Toby. After that, he hadn't gone back to the theatre. Sarah was disappointed – he knew she'd been trying to instil a love of the magic of the theatre in him – but she hid it well.

When they'd done a project on the play in Toby's English class last term, it had brought back a lot of his old fears about fairies and illusions and shadows and dreams. He'd nearly failed the project because he hadn't opened the book once. But it didn't matter. What did matter was that Toby knew what was real and what was not, and Shakespeare's weird play about the fairies was not real.

Now he was beginning to wonder.

_A Midsummer Night's Dream_. There had been a changeling, and the Queen of the Fairies had fallen in love with a mortal man.

He had to ask. "Are you the queen of the fairies?"

She laughed again. "No. Just the Queen. Don't worry, I'm not even remotely in love with you."

"Well, why am I here then?" Toby asked loudly, and checked himself. Shout in this dungeon and you'd be deaf in a minute from the echoes.

"Does it really matter?" she shot right back, looking at him intently with some unfathomable expression.

"Why did you come down here? Just to laugh at me? If that's all you came to do, then do it and leave!"

"So impolite." The Queen shook her head, sleek, dark hair swirling as if underwater. "Perhaps you'll learn some manners while you're here. Perhaps not. I suppose it's up to you. No, I didn't come down here to laugh at you. I'm only here you ensure your comfort. Nothing more, nothing less."

"Well, I'm about as comfortable as anybody can get in a dungeon," Toby grumbled. "I'd be more comfortable if I could go home."

She sighed mockingly. "I'm afraid that's simply not possible."

"Well, would you just go away then?"

"Is that what you wish?"

It seemed like an odd way to put it, but Toby nodded. "Yeah, that's what I wish. Just...go away."

She sniffed disapprovingly, but she turned and glided out of the ring of candlelight. Her feet rang against the flagstones, but Toby couldn't actually see them under the sweep of her gown. The footsteps continued for a few minutes after she vanished from sight, and then died away, leaving only faint echoes. Those continued briefly before echoing off into oblivion. Toby was once again left alone with his thoughts.

_Sarah would love this._ He slouched miserably against the cold stone. _It's right up her alley. I just want to go home._ He sniffed, and hoped he wasn't going to sneeze. The echoes would be deafening. _At least I'm not going to end up with a donkey's head._

And then, right on cue, he heard shuffling footsteps hurrying down the corridor towards him.

He tensed, sure it was the Queen, coming back. But these footsteps came from the opposite direction, and besides, they didn't sound the way her steps had. They were more muffled, and sounded like the owner was in a rush. They were accompanied by a curious jingling, like a sack of cutlery being gently bounced up and down.

After a few seconds, the owner of the feet hurried into view. Toby stared. If this was a fairy, then it was probably a good thing that no one had seen one since medieval times. He was about half Toby's height, wrinkled like an apple that had been left out in the sun for too long, and dressed in clothes that were several hundred years out of style. (Of course, it was the same sort of thing that Sarah had worn with alarming regularity, but...well, she was Sarah, after all.) A jumble of jewellery tied to the belt of his trousers was producing the strange jingling.

_This just gets weirder and weirder,_ Toby thought. Aloud, he said, "Uh, hi."

The fairy (?) looked Toby up and down, and said, "Well, you've grown."

"What are you talking about? It's only been a couple minutes. I'm exactly the same size."

The fairy's wrinkled face creased into a frown of confusion. "You don't know who I am?"

"No! I don't believe in fairy tales. Look, this is all...a nightmare, or a hallucination, or something."

"You don't believe in fairy tales."

"Right."

"Huh!" The fairy (?) snorted. "Shows what you know, don't it?"

Toby rolled his eyes. "Look, can we just skip it? Why are you here?"

"I's busting you out, what' it look like?" So saying, the fairy (?) took a very grubby handkerchief from his pocket and folded it back to reveal a heavy iron key. Toby noticed that he seemed to be trying not to touch it directly, and wondered vaguely if this was important. It certainly seemed to be causing the fairy (?) a great deal of trouble in turning the key.

"Do you want me to do that?" Toby asked, the good manners that his mother had drilled into him since birth combining with the prospect of freedom.

"I-can-get-it-" the fairy (?) grunted, as he tried to turn the heavy key in the lock, which was nearly a foot above his head, and without touching the key without the grubby handkerchief wrapped around it. Toby sighed, reached out through the bars, and grabbed the key. He gave it one sharp, decisive twist, and was rewarded by the click of the door as it swung open.

"I could have done it," the little man (Toby was finding it far too difficult to keep thinking of him as a fairy) muttered resentfully.

"Hey, thanks for breaking me out," Toby said, choosing to ignore the little man's surly mood. "I'm Toby."

"The name's Hoggle. Not Hogwart, not Haggle, Hoggle. Got it?"

"I think so," Toby replied. The little man's name seemed to be a touchy subject for him. "Hoggle?'

Hoggle nodded appreciatively. "You'd be surprised how many people get it wrong," he said. "Now, I'm only doing this because of Sarah. This new Queen is even scarier than Jareth was, and I don't stick my neck out for nobody!"

"Okay," Toby said, more mystified than before. "Wait, what about Sarah? Who's this 'Jareth'?" Even as he said it, the name struck a chord somewhere in his memory. "He was in a fairy tale, wasn't he? You were too!"

"I knew it! I knew she didn't forget about us! She told you about everything?"

Toby shrugged. "Might have. Sarah tells a lot of stories." _Sometimes I don't know if she knows which are stories and which aren't_ , he thought.

Hoggle looked as though he'd like to kick something. "If you'd just listened, this would be so much easier," he grumbled. 'But you don't believe in fairy tales, right?"

Toby nodded. Hoggle rolled his eyes. "Well, come on then, before the Queen notices them keys is missing."

Toby didn't need telling twice. "Which way?"

Hoggle pointed back the way he'd come. "Follow me. Oh, I wasn't going to do this," he muttered as he took off down the dark corridor. Toby had to run a little to keep up, despite his longer legs. "I was just gonna keep an eye on you. But you get a chance like this, and what can you do? Oh, damn you, Sarah..."

This mystifying monologue continued as they walked through the darkness, making it possible for Toby to keep track of the path he was supposed to be following. Before long, he could feel steps under his feet (and nearly tripped on them – he wasn't exactly what anyone would call incredibly co-ordinated), and then they were climbing out of the darkness into a hall filled with daylight.

Toby ran immediately to the nearest window and feasted his eyes on the first real sunlight he'd seen since he'd been shut up in that disgusting dungeon, he didn't really know how long ago. But something was wrong about the light – it was too low, or too gold, or something. It wasn't right.

He looked out at the city sprawled around the castle. That wasn't right, either. There was the fact that it looked like it had been picked up and transplanted from the fourteenth century. But the buildings themselves were wrong, as well: sitting at odd angles, with turrets or chimneys stuck on any old where, and not laid out in any visible pattern of streets or neighbourhoods. They seemed to have been placed helter-skelter without any planning.

'What -"Toby started to say, but was abruptly dragged back from the window.

"Do you want to get caught and thrown back in the dungeon?" Hoggle demanded.

"No!"

"Then keep your head down!"

Chastised, Toby followed the little man down the length of the hall in an awkward crouch, keeping his head below window level. The hall ended in a set of stone steps leading out into a park, beyond which was a gate that led into the city proper.

Toby suddenly realised just how easy it would be for them to get caught. If someone happened to walk by right now, it'd be back to the dungeon for him. And right now, the only place he wanted to go was home.

So he was utterly relieved when Hoggle stomped up to the doorway at the end of the hall, pushed on one of the stones in the door frame, and the whole scene – steps, park, gate and city – swung away like a painting opening to reveal a secret passage. Behind it, more stone steps, these glittering faintly, descended into darkness.

"How..." Toby asked, but quickly recovered. The landscape must have been a painting. Never mind that he'd seen stuff behind the edges come into view around the doorway and stuff in the distance coming closer. It was probably just a trick of the light. "Never mind. Where does this go?"

"Under the courtyard, under the city, straight into the Labyrinth itself. It's a secret passage. No one and nobody knows it's here, and that includes the Queen."

"Then it's safe?"

Hoggle snorted loudly. "Of course not! What good would a Labyrinth be if it was safe?" He began walking down the stone stairs, mumbling derisively. All Toby caught was "safe!" and "Shut the door behind you." Apprehensively, Toby stepped inside, and did so.

He was engulfed in blackness.

Toby fought down a moment of panic, and forced himself to take the first step down. The second and third steps were easier. The fourth was almost nothing, and on the fifth Toby walked into a wall.

Nose smarting, he tried to turn right, but was met with cold and slightly damp stone again. He turned left, and counted the steps down. This time, he turned at the fifth stair, and was rewarded by not smacking into a wall. This pattern continued for the next few sets of stairs.

Okay...so this was a spiral staircase, of sorts. It wasn't hard, once you got used to it. The trick was not to let flying blind get to you. Toby set off confidently down the stairs, sure he'd conquered their main terror.

After a few minutes of walking in the darkness, he wasn't so sure. _What if I've gotten turned around in the dark and I'm going back up? What if there was a door somewhere back there and I missed it?_ And, worst of all, the nagging feeling that gravity no longer quite knew which way was up, and it was up to him to decide. He hadn't felt that in ages, not since he'd hidden the stupid M.C. Escher poster Sarah'd given him at the bottom of his closet. It made Toby want to curl up in a little ball and call for his mommy. But, since that was ridiculous, and because Toby was way too old to still be scared of the dark, he swallowed that fear and kept walking.

After what felt like forever, the staircase levelled out. Toby took a few tentative steps forward and nearly tripped over Hoggle, who muttered something that sounded like a curse but wasn't loud enough for Toby to tell. Something flared in the dark, and then Hoggle put the match to the candle that was conveniently located in a niche just to their right. Steady, warm light filled the cavernous hall. Toby looked around, amazed, at the elaborate stonework. Arches leaped up and across the vaulted ceiling, disappearing into shadows at the very top. Carved meticulously into these arches and occasionally into the walls were a wide array of grotesque faces, all carved so that it seemed they were all leering directly at you no matter where in the hall you were. It seemed designed to bring to life Toby's worst fears – the incredibly irrational ones about little monstrous creatures and about being watched by an audience. Despite himself, he shivered. "Nice defence system," he said, and it didn't echo. The silence here seemed to be waiting, hungry to pounce on his every word. Hoggle waved a dismissive hand at the carvings. "Eh, ignore them." He picked up the candle holder and started off down the passage. Once again, Toby had to run a bit to catch up.

He lost track of how long it took to walk the length of the hall. He was beginning to wish he'd worn his watch when a ladder, leaning against the other wall, came into view in the circle of candlelight. It looked long and it looked rickety, but it also looked like a way out. Toby started up it without a moment's hesitation, leaving Hoggle below to set the candle in another niche in the wall before starting up the ladder himself.

Toby finally emerged into the fresh air with a sigh of relief, and clambered out of the large decorative urn the ladder had come up in. A few moments passed before his guide followed. Hoggle seemed to be having a little difficulty in getting out of the urn. Toby distractedly lent a hand; he was too busy looking around to pay much attention.

"This place looks familiar," he said, half to himself. "I mean, I'm sure I've never been here, but I think I've seen it before."

'We're in the Labyrinth now," Hoggle said. "Don't trust anything you see." Toby shrugged. "It's always worked for me before. Hey, there's a door over there."

"Is that the only place it branches off?" Hoggle began a thorough check of the shrubbery surrounding the little courtyard in which they stood.

Toby said, "Yeah," then looked around. They were standing in what appeared to be a round, cobblestone courtyard. Behind them were the gates to the city; ahead, the door. Around the circle, perfectly pruned hedges hid from sight whatever else there was to see.

Hoggle frowned. 'I don't like this," he said darkly.

Toby ignored him, and pushed on the door. It moved at his touch, instead of taking a shove like he'd expected, and so he fell off-balance and stumbled straight into –

\- the main hallway of his high school.


	6. Chapter 6

Sarah only realised that she was staring when her stepmother peered over her shoulder and said, "So that's the infamous Labyrinth?" The heads of the three nearest guards swivelled towards them, and Sarah, Irene, and Sir Didymus all ducked out of sight.

"Yes, that's the Labyrinth," Sarah replied, in a whisper.

"How do we get there?"

Sarah turned (with some difficulty, as she was attempting to stay hidden below the hole where the mirror had been) to Sir Didymus. "What's the plan?"

"Sir Ludo is on the other side of yonder wall. When we give the signal, he will create a diversion, thus drawing the guards away from our position. Then we shall slip past the unguarded portion of the wall." Sir Didymus looked quite pleased with himself, possibly because he'd thought a plan through for once.

Sarah nodded. "That sounds good. What's the signal?"

Sir Didymus opened his mouth confidently, then shut it again. "Would either of you ladies happen to have anything about your persons that could be used as a signal?"

Sarah rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, but couldn't keep from smiling. Everything was different, but nothing had really changed. "All I've got is my slippers, my robe, and my nightshirt. Maybe if you'd come during the day..."

Irene held up an umbrella. "Would this do?"

"Where did you get that?" Sarah asked.

Irene shrugged. "I was carrying it with me to protect myself from the rain – something you might want to try."

"That was _once_ ," Sarah replied hotly. 'Why do you have your umbrella with you here?"

Irene pointed to the strap around her wrist. "You didn't tell me where to put it, so I carried it with me."

Sarah swallowed her rant about dripping on her floor, realising that she really hadn't told Irene where to put her umbrella to dry out. Instead, she asked, 'Does it have a spring release?"

"Doesn't every umbrella now?" Irene replied.

"Then it's perfect,' Sarah said. "May we borrow it?"

"I can open my own umbrella, Sarah," Irene said coolly.

"Indeed, fair lady, but might I suggest that you remain in relative safety while I undertake this dangerous undertaking?" Sir Didymus offered.

"Dangerous? I know I've broken a nail on those spring buttons, but -"

"The guards will look at the signal before the diversion, and whoever gives the signal will be endangered until the diversion begins."

Irene peered around the hole in the wall. "They don't look particularly fast," she said calmly. "And you, sir knight, are too short to be seen over them, even with the umbrella." She nodded once. "I'll do it."

"That's not fair!" Sarah said. "I thought this was my adventure." And then, mentally, she checked herself. _Are you still fifteen? No! Then stop complaining!_

Irene unclipped the strap containing the umbrella, stepped in front of the hole in the wall, raised the umbrella above her head, and pressed the spring release button.

Nothing happened.

The guards clacked their claws menacingly. Irene fumbled with the umbrella. 'Damn thing," she muttered.

Sarah sighed, brushed her hair out of her face, stood up, and took the umbrella from her stepmother. "This is ridiculous," she said, as she squeezed the button.

The umbrella unfurled like a great black bat, with a noise that echoed over the slightly unreal landscape as if the sky had broken in two. The three nearest guards began to advance, spider-like, on the hole where the mirror had been.

"Come on, Ludo," Sarah whispered.

She was answered by a loud roaring, in many different pitches at once, from somewhere beyond the low wall. The floor began to shake, and Irene was pitched off her feet. "What is it?" she shouted, over the rumbling.

Sarah looked out and saw, off to their left, a herd of rocks stampeding. They bounced cheerfully over the wall, the boulders of which were hurrying to join them. The border guards kept scuttling towards Sarah for a few heart-stopping seconds, but at last, they turned and clicked off to try to stop the invasion.

Sarah let out a breath she hadn't noticed she'd been holding. "All right, let's go!"

"Are you sure it's safe?" Irene asked.

"Of course, fair lady!" Sir Didymus stated proudly. "My brother Ludo has provided a distraction. The border guards will not hinder us in our quest!"

"Yes, but...what's doing the roaring? And the rumbling?"

Sarah beckoned her stepmother to the door. "Come and see for yourself."

Irene stood (somewhat shakily, as the floor was still bouncing about) and looked out. "Oh," she said, seeing the rockslide. "And the roaring?"

"That's Ludo," Sarah said. She stepped up onto the edge of the door and jumped out onto the grass. From here, the doorway from the Borderlands into the Underground looked like someone had painted a pretty, boring country scene, and had then cut a rectangular hole in the canvas. "He's calling the rocks," she continued. "Here, give me your hands, and I'll help you down."

Irene said stridently, "I can get down by myself, thank you," but she did end up leaning on Sarah's arms to help herself balance as she jumped. Sir Didymus followed her, small legs oscillating wildly, as he bounced off of Sarah's shoulder and onto the ground.

Sarah half-expected alarms to go off and guards to leap out of nowhere as they stepped over the wall, but nothing happened. A little ways to her left, she saw the crablike black guards desperately trying to fend off the avalanche that was destroying their precious wall. And then, the unlikely trio was past them, and the wall and its guardians disappeared over a small rise, as if they had never been.

"Where do we go now?" she asked.

"We shall meet with Sir Ludo and confer as to our next move." Sir Didymus frowned, as much as his face was able to do so. "And my cowardly steed."

"I was wondering about Ambrosius. Where is that big quivering ball of fur?"

"He refuses to go near the Borderlands." Sir Didymus scoffed, a sound that, until now, Sarah had thought people only made in books. "Too afraid of some...Jabber-thingy. Even threatening to take his food away did not make a difference. So I allowed him to stay and aid with the diversion."

"I hope they're all right," Sarah said, suddenly realising how much danger her friends could be in.

"Perfectly fine, I'm sure. The border guards are a bit like bees – once you're inside the hive, they pay you no attention."

"Then let's go, get these people, get my son, and get out of this place." Irene began to march determinedly to the left, only to be stopped, again, by a shout from Sir Didymus. "Oh, what is it this time?" she asked exasperatedly.

"I beg your pardon, fair lady. But you are still going the wrong way."

Irene crossed her arms, obviously nearing the end of her patience. "Well, lead on then."

* * *

Toby picked himself up off of the floor and looked around. Other than the complete lack of other people, the hallway in which he stood was exactly the same as the main hall of his high school. The security camera glared balefully at him from its perch on the ceiling, beside the sulking red EXIT sign. Before him, rows of lockers, interspersed with classroom doors, lined the long hall. At the far end, a pair of double doors stood very definitely closed, shielding the rest of the school from view.

"What the hell?" Toby inquired of the silence, which shrugged and slunk away into the shadows thrown by the fluorescent lights. "Seriously, what the hell is going on here?"

The fluorescent lighting hummed a little tune and tried to look innocent.

Behind Toby, another pair of heavy steel doors hissed open reluctantly. He spun around, to see Hoggle shutting the door. It closed reluctantly, hydraulics complaining. "Well? What're you looking at?" he inquired gruffly.

"This is really my school, isn't it?" Toby asked incredulously.

"Might be," Hoggle replied guardedly. "More likely it's not. Things isn't always as they seem in the Labyrinth."

"No," Toby said softly, not really wanting to disturb the suddenly church-like quiet in the hallway. "No, this is it. I'm back. I'm home." He turned and began to walk down the hall, repeating things to this effect as if saying it would make it true. "We made it. I'm back."

"Not so fast!"

The voice was loud, ringing through the deserted hallway, harsh and so commanding that it stopped Toby dead in his tracks. He knew that voice.

And, sure enough, his math teacher, Mrs Blake, stepped out of her classroom and fixed him with her signature icy glare. "I thought it was you, Toby Williams. What are you doing, wandering around the halls during class? Skipping, I might expect."

"No – I wasn't! I just got here!" Toby protested.

"Oh, is that so? And where were you before you got here?" Mrs Blake put one hand on her hip. Toby imagined each classroom along the hallway full of people, all silent, listening to Mrs Blake yelling at him and straining to hear his response. For a moment, he considered telling the truth, but then realised that 'I was trapped in a fairy tale' was a pretty poor excuse. The weight of the silence pressed on him, and he felt himself struggling to breathe.

Mrs Blake lost her patience. "Oh, never mind,' she snapped. "Go to the principal's office. You can explain to him what the problem is."

"Yes, ma'am," Toby whispered, his throat tightening. In his mind's eye, the classes that had waited with baited breath were whispering, wondering why he hadn't spoken. Soon, it would register that he'd been sent to the principal, and they would start to laugh. He turned to leave, utterly shamed.

And found himself staring at Hoggle, who said, "Don't listen to her!"

"But she's my teacher."

"Are you sure?"

Toby looked back. Mrs Blake had crossed her arms and was tapping one foot impatiently.

'Toby Williams, I told you to report to Principal Raven!"

"Sorry, ma'am," Toby said. But he didn't move.

"Toby, did you hear me? Move it!"

Toby stood and listened. Was the silence the sound of people listening, or was it the sound of no one there?

His musings were abruptly interrupted by Mrs Blake, who grabbed his arm and began to frog-march him down the hall. "And your little friend can come too," she snarled, grabbing Hoggle by the ear. Ignoring the protests from both of them, she dragged them both back along the hall and through the double doors.

When they walked back through the courtyard, Toby didn't want to believe it. When Mrs Blake tugged him through the gate and up the street that led through the city, he tried to pretend that it wasn't really happening. But when they turned onto a little path that led through the castle gardens, up to the arch that had, from the other side, hidden a secret passageway, he had to give in and admit that he had been wrong, and now – he choked back something that might have been a scream – it was all for nothing. He would be going straight back to the dungeon. He hoped his rescuer would be let off with a lighter punishment.

When they reached the throne room, the lady who now no longer looked like Mrs Blake let both Toby and a struggling Hoggle go, snapped her fingers, and sank heavily onto the throne. Two grotesque little creatures (Toby was sure that they weren't fairies) came out of seemingly nowhere, carrying lengths of thick chain. The lady in Mrs Blake's tailored suit took off her square glasses, waved at the ugly little monsters, and began to dismantle her bun. Hoggle punched the thing trying to shackle him, but it just laughed and locked the chains tight around his wrists. Toby didn't even try to fight. He didn't see the point. Even if he did escape, she could see wherever he went, could reach out and pull him back whenever she wanted.

The Queen looked down at the hapless two before her throne, and said, "I am very disappointed."


	7. Chapter 7

"Sawah!"

"Ludo!"

Sarah ran in for a hug from her large, furry friend. He might look a bit intimidating, but she knew better than anyone what a good heart hid under his shaggy coat.

Irene, unfortunately, did not know. She yelped like a small dog who'd just been kicked and started to back away. Ambrosius ran and jumped up on her, getting mud all over her skirt. Irene yelled again. "Down! Sit, boy! Get this dog off of me!"

Sarah, snuggled in Ludo's fur, ignored this. "It's been too long," she whispered.

Ludo gently patted her back. "Sawah fwend. Sawah back."

"What on Earth?" Irene gasped, propelling Ambrosius firmly aside.

Sarah broke out of the hug. "This is Ludo," she said, relishing the expression on her stepmother's face. "He's my friend."

* * *

Toby sat in the throne room, chained to the floor and sunk in gloom and despair. At least there was some light, although it wasn't proper sunlight, and he had somebody to talk to. Unfortunately, the Queen had decided she wouldn't let either Toby or Hoggle out of her sight. So, they both sat, despondent, before her throne.

Something that had been nagging at Toby chose this moment to poke him hard in the brain. Despite the watchful gaze of the Queen, he turned and asked Hoggle, "So how do you know my sister, anyway?"

"Didn't she ever tell you?"

Toby shook his head.

Hoggle sighed. "Did she ever tell you the story of the Labyrinth, then?"

Toby shook his head again, denying it, but then something bubbled up from his early memory. Red, and his sister's voice... "Maybe," he said guardedly. "Did it have goblins in it?"

"Allow me to refresh your memory," the Queen said, interrupting and startling Toby, who had almost forgotten she was there. "A beautiful princess was treated as a slave by her wicked stepmother, always having to cook, clean, and take care of the baby. But what no one knew was that the King of the Goblins had fallen in love with the girl, and he had granted her certain powers."

"Yeah, that's it." Toby sat back. "But what's this got to do with me?"

The Queen held up one long, alabaster finger. "And the princess knew that, if she wished it, the Goblin King would take the baby away, and keep it for ever and ever, and turn it into a goblin."

"Hey, I do remember this!" Toby exclaimed. "And then she wishes for the goblins to take her brother away, and then she wants him back and has to go rescue him from the goblin castle. It always seemed kind of dumb to me. I mean, why not just not wish in the first place?"

A frown puckered the Queen's forehead. "Ah, but thought the princess was selfish, she had a good heart. And once she realised what she'd done, she pleaded with the Goblin King to give back the child. He could not do so, but he could not find it in his heart to refuse the princess, for he still loved her a great deal. So, he gave the princess one last chance: solve his Labyrinth in thirteen hours, or give up the baby forever.

"Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, she fought her way to the castle beyond the Goblin City to take back the child that he had stolen. The King of the Goblins tried to keep her from the child, but her will was as strong as his, and her kingdom as great.

"He had no power over her."

Toby raised an eyebrow. "Wow. You're a pretty fair storyteller."

The Queen smiled grimly. "I'm very familiar with this particular story."

"So what has this got to do with Sarah?" Toby asked. "I mean, it's her favourite book and all, but come on! That thing was written ages ago. And I haven't seen any Goblin Kings in all the time I've been here." He stopped. Something about the room was giving him a strange sense of déjà vu. But his memory was playing tricks on him. Instead of the cold, empty silence in the throne room, it was filled with grubby bodies and noise and amiable heat. Music threaded through the din, and mingled with the squawks of chickens and the laughter of little monsters. And instead of the Queen, sitting prim and proper and expressionless on teh throne, someone else lounged there, someone whose eyes danced and sparkled, whose moods changed as quickly as the weather, and whose voice filled the room...

"Toby?"

Toby looked down to see a look of worry on Hoggle's lined face.

"Sorry," Toby said quickly. "I just spaced out for a second there. But none of this answers my question. How do you know Sarah?"

"When she wished for the goblins to take you away, she changed her mind at the last minute and asked to get you back. And she made me help her solve the Labyrinth."

Toby laughed. "Wait, you seriously mean to tell me that my sister was the heroine of that stupid book?"

Hoggle shrugged. "You could say that."

The Queen shook her head, hair swishing delicately like waves against a beach. "No. She was not the first. She merely made the same mistakes."

"But that would be ridiculous!" Toby laughed. "There's no such thing as goblins."

This was met by a politely frozen stare from the Queen and a scoff from Hoggle. "Shows what you know, don't it? Huh. 'Fairies'."

Toby's smile froze on his face. "You mean there really are goblins?"

"You're talking to me, now, ain't you?"

* * *

"How do we get in?"

Sarah scanned the outer walls of the Labyrinth. It didn't look as though anything had changed since her first visit – the hill was just as barren, the landscape just as unnaturally sparkly, the walls just as impenetrable. The pixies were a bit more prolific, but that seemed to be the only thing that had altered in any small way. Sarah noticed with some satisfaction that Irene avoided the pixies with a grimace of disgust, while Ludo was trying to catch the quick-moving little pests. "I've no idea. Last time, Hoggle opened the doors for me...?" She looked hopefully at Sir Didymus, who shook his head.

"Sir Hoggle is gatekeeper, but he is not here. We shall have to go in the back door."

"Which is where?" Irene asked shrilly, swatting at a couple of pixies that had become entangled in her hairdo.

Sarah shut her eyes and pointed at random."There." She opened her eyes, to see that she was staring at a blank stretch of wall between two towers.

Sir Didymus cocked his head to one side and gazed intently at the wall. "A most unorthodox method, milady, but it seems as though it has been effective."

"What are you talking about? That's just a wall!" Irene exclaimed. The pixies now seemed to be trying to nest in her hair. She swatted wildly at them, to no great effect.

Sarah giggled. "I think they're attracted to your hairspray."

Sir Didymus spurred on his steed, who dashed forward between the towers. "The castle lies yonder," he called back. "We must not tarry!"

Irene tried to remove a pixie from her hair by force. It sank sharp little teeth deep into her finger, and she shouted. "How? There's nothing but a wall there!"

Sarah sighed, and flicked her hair back out of her face again. She glared at it, wondering (not for the first time) why she didn't get it cut short, and then tucked a long lock behind her right ear. Over Irene's shoulder, she saw Ludo trying to pluck the pixies out of her stepmother's hair, and had to stifle a laugh. "Things aren't always what they seem to be here." She followed Sir Didymus up to the wall, then stepped forward, between the towers. Suddenly, she saw what she hadn't seen before – the blank wall that had looked so forbidding from outside, was actually on the inside of the Labyrinth. Two long paths stretched out, seemingly endlessly, on either side.

Sarah turned around and beckoned to her stepmother and Ludo. "We can get in here. Come on!"

Irene stopped waving vainly at the pixies in her hair, allowing Ludo to get nearer. "Is there a hidden door or something? AAH!" she shouted, and jumped forwards. The lone pixie remaining in her hair looked almost as bewildered as Irene did frightened. Ludo, behind her, held up the struggling pixie he'd successfully removed from Irene's hair and smiled. Irene screamed again. Sarah found that she was losing her patience.

"Ludo, leave the pixies. C'mon. We've got a brother to save."

Ludo nodded and shambled forwards. Irene tried to turn her patented glare on the pixie on her head, but he was out of her line of sight. She blew out a long, huffy breath, and marched over to join them.

"I still don't see how -" she began, but Sarah caught her wrist and yanked her in between the towers.

"It's an optical illusion," Sarah explained.

"Oh," Irene said briskly, nodding. The pixie hung on for dear life.

"Now. I want to make this very clear. Things really aren't always as they seem here. You can't really trust your sense sometimes, so trust your judgement. And please, don't try being stern at the goblins. They won't get it." Irene nodded, apparently dumbstruck at receiving a lecture from her stepdaughter.

"The same goes for the people here," Sarah continued. "Ludo is my friend. Sir Didymus is my friend. Hoggle is my friend. When we meet him, I'll introduce you two. And I expect that you will not scream, or say something rude. Because that's all you've done to my friends so far."

Irene nodded again. And then, she astonished Sarah by saying something Sarah'd thought she'd never hear her stepmother say.

"All right. I was wrong, and I'm sorry."

Sarah knew she was pushing it, but she said, "Don't apologise to me. Sir Didymus and Ludo are the ones who deserve an apology."

"I'm sorry," Irene repeated, this time directing her words to Sarah's friends. "I've been overreacting."

Sir Didymus shook his head. "Not at all, fair lady. I understand your predicament."

Irene turned to Ludo. "Can you forgive me?"

Ludo nodded his shaggey head. "Fwends?" he asked.

Irene shrugged. "All right, friends."

Ludo grinned, and then reached out and plucked the other pixie from Irene's hair.

"Now, let's get going! We don't have all night," she said, composure regained.

"All right. Which way shall we go?" Sarah asked, suddenly uncertain. It had been a while, after all. And you forget a lot of things over fifteen years. Namely, just how hard it is to navigate your way through a gargantuan maze.

"Why, left, of course," Sir Didymus answered her.

"'Kay." So saying, Sarah set off confidently in one direction, Irene in the other. A few steps later, both stopped, turned, and said, "you're going the wrong way!"

"Left is this way, Sarah," Irene told her stepdaughter, pointing in the direction she was walking.

"No, I know my directions. It's this way!" Sarah contradicted her.

This exchange went on for a minute or so, and then Sir Didymus interrupted.

"Might I suggest that this is all a misunderstanding? You were both facing different directions."

Sarah and her stepmother both looked at him, then at each other. "I can't believe I didn't notice that," Sarah admitted. "So which way is left, then?"

Irene shook her head. "You just can't rely on that kind of direction. We need a compass."

Sir Didymus pointed to his left. "Well, since the Labyrinth moves about, there's really not much use for north, south, east and west. And compasses do not work here. But, if one keeps going left, one will find oneself at the center."

"So...how do we decide which left is left?" Sarah asked, getting increasingly frustrated.

Sir Didymus spurred Ambrosius on. "Left, boy!" he shouted. Ambrosius barked and sped off in the direction Irene had taken.

Sarah sighed. _And as usual, she was right._ "Come on, Ludo," she said to her biggest friend, "they're going to leave us behind."

* * *

The Queen smiled and leaned back from the crystal perched on a delicate gold stand. "How are they ever going to get here with that kind of haphazard approach?" she asked the room in general, sounding amused.

"It worked once," Hoggle grumbled.

"That's what I'm counting on," the Queen said absently. "That, and the fact that they are unbound by any time limit."

Toby was bursting with questions, but he had no idea where to start. He settled for, "So let me get this straight. My sister and my mom are here? In the Labyrinth?"

"Yes," the Queen answered. "Not that way! Oh, good grief." She made a stirring motion over the crystal with one finger.

"And they're coming to rescue us?"

"If they ever make it to the castle," Hoggle grumbled.

"And Sarah had to come save me once before, because she wished the goblins would come and take me away and they actually did?"

"Yes."

"So, um, why am I here now? Why did the goblins come back?"

The Queen smiled her tight-lipped smile. "Because you've now come of age. I can claim you, as a stolen child, as heir to the goblin throne."

Toby had had a million other questions, but they all vanished in an instant. "Uh, no. No way."He shook his head as if he could un-hear what he'd just heard.

The Queen arched an eyebrow, her attention drawn from the crystal ball. "There's no King on the throne. The law says that the regent can claim any stolen child to be his heir. That includes you."

Toby swallowed hard. To be trapped in this nightmarish place for the rest of his life, without proper sunlight and with little goblins always watching him... "You're not serious. There's no way I'm going to be the Goblin King. I mean, you wouldn't have put me in the dungeons if that was why you brought me here."

The Queen turned her attention back to the crystal. "You're right. That was just an excuse."

Toby let out a long sigh of relief. "Whew. I was actually scared for a moment there!" And then cold, horrible realisation broke over him. "Wait. If that's not it, then why am I really here?"

The Queen smiled vaguely and caressed the side of the crystal. "Bait," she said.


	8. Chapter 8

"You have no power over me!"

The clock chimed.

He reached out to her one last time, to try to make her stop, to make her see, to make her take back the words. But it was too late. He looked straight into her eyes, her dark eyes set with determination, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was over. The game was done, the maze was run.

He, the Goblin King, had lost.

It was not possible. And yet, it had happened. A silly girl, who had made a stupid wish, had actually defeated him. How many had he tempted? How many had he won? How many had made it this far, only to succumb to the pretty dreams he'd promised them? How many had never made it past the gate?

And yet, somehow, one had broken through. And she had proved his undoing. And Jareth found that he was...pleased?

Unthinkable. But true. When she'd first spoken to him, the defiance in her voice – it must have bewitched him, somehow. He'd spent the past thirteen hours trying to break her, to bend her to his will. But in the end, it had been she who had broken him. And he was almost glad that he hadn't won, that she hadn't given up, as he'd expected. That she hadn't given in to her dreams. Such flighty things, dreams. If one wasn't careful, one could fall in love with them and forget to live. And it seemed not even Goblin Kings were free from their dangerous grip.

And so, Jareth fell, painfully aware that he had been bested and unsure of how to feel. Her name slipped from his lips, soundless, just as the crystal slipped from his grasp. It was a remonstration and a prayer, rolled into one.

"Sarah..."

* * *

Linda felt it when the crystal cracked. The ballroom around her was thrown into chaos, the dancers panicking, sounding more frightened than when Sarah had momentarily broken through its ensorcelled walls. The candles all went out at once, plunging the sparkling room into impenetrable darkness. The shouts and shrieks of goblin royalty thrust into pandemonium were all around Linda, but she ignored them. Somewhere, there was a way out.

Someone ran bodily into her in the dark, bearing her to the ground. She skinned the palms of both hands, and felt the sharp sting of pain for the first time since she'd given him power over her.

That power, that pride, it was broken now. She didn't know how, she didn't know why, all she knew was that the spells were all shattered. She could run, she could free herself, she could escape.

The spells disintegrated around her, magic spinning wildly, now loosed into the world as she was and uncertain where to go. She reached out and drew it towards herself, unsure of what she was doing or why. All she knew, as she fell through the darkness, was that the Goblin King was going to pay for making her miss nearly fifteen years of her life.

* * *

The great portal to the Goblin City stood unguarded.

"Is this...usual?" Irene asked. After she'd nearly fallen into the bog after writing off the warnings as false alarms, she'd been content to let the others lead the way.

"I don't know," Sarah replied. She'd thought the gates would be guarded, if only by one or two drowsy goblins. It was strange. The whole Labyrinth had been like this, and she wondered why. Why was it so easy this time? Was it just because she was older and wiser now?

_Last time you thought like that, you ended up in an oubliette,_ Sarah mentally scolded herself. _No, something's wrong._

"Whether or not it is usual, I cannot say," Sir Didymus remarked. "I have been dutifully guarding my post in the Bog of Eternal Stench until now – although, I cannot fathom why it has earned that wretched name. But whether or not it is usual to leave the doors undefended, it is very lax indeed! When we reach the castle, I shall be sure to complain about the security! At least Jareth always had a guard on duty, even if that guard was always fast asleep." He sniffed huffily.

"Where is that poufy-haired fop in the too-tight pants, anyway?" Sarah asked.

Ludo shrugged. Sir Didymus echoed the gesture. "No one knows for sure, milady, although there are rumours. The Queen has him kept prisoner somewhere."

"She can do that? Lock Jareth up and hide him from the world?" Sarah mentally re-evaluated her faceless opponent.

"No, milady. She has not the power to imprison the Goblin King. But the Lords and Ladies do, and she ahs their blessing."

"Hmm. So, she's sneaky and underhanded, then," Sarah said, thinking aloud.

"Really, Sarah, you're much too dramatic. How is it sneaky or underhanded to operate through proper legal channels?" Irene asked. Sarah ground her teeth together. "Now, I don't pretend to know anything about how this place is run, but it looks like the Queen is doing a better job than this Jareth." She frowned. "Except in matters of security."

"Which is strange." Sarah scanned the walls enclosing the city. They had a smug, 'keep-out' sort of look to them. "You'd think that anyone who could keep Jareth locked up would know how to defend a city properly. But we haven't met a single guard in all the time we've been here."

Sir Didymus cleared his throat. "That would be because you followed my expert directions, milady."

"But then why are there no guards on the city gates?"

Sir Didymus stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Perhaps she is using magic."

"What? But that's not fair!"

Sarah was suddenly aware that everyone was watching her, waiting for an explanation. Oh, damn. She'd tried not to do this. "I mean," she explained, feeling a blush rising in her cheeks, "that it almost seems like cheating, letting us get this far only to lock us out." _Oh, that's just as bad, Sarah. Here's a shovel, why don't you dig yourself in deeper?_

"Well, you had no real right to run the Labyrinth this time, milady. The Queen would be justified in keeping you from the castle."

"Of course, she might not have used magic on the doors at all," Irene pointed out.

"I suppose there's only one way to find out," Sarah said, cheeks still burning. She turned and marched up to the doors, and knocked. There was no reply. However, she also wasn't turned into a toad, dropped into the bog, or struck with a lightning bolt. She waved the other three over. "Could you help me with these doors?"

As it turned out, the doors hadn't even been locked. They swung open with a protesting creak of disuse. But, contrary to Sarah's expectations, no one and nothing was waiting on the other side. There were no goblins in sight, and not even the tail feathers of a chicken or a ball of black fluff were visible rushing through the streets on their way to elsewhere. The silence that hung in the stagnant air was not the oppressive silence of many people being very quiet, but the echoing silence of no one being there.

"Hmm. They must have retreated," Sir Didymus surmised. "Perhaps they received news that we were on our way, and wisely decided to surrender."

"I...don't think so," Sarah said tactfully, peering through a window. "If that had happened, the city would be in more disarray. It looks like they had time to pack."

"This place looks as if it's been deserted for quite a while now. What could have happened?" Irene wondered aloud.

Sarah ignored them, walking through the streets as if in a trance. It was all wrong. Everything had been too easy, to start with. She'd severely doubted the "left" trick would work, but here they were. And therein lay the wrongness of it all. Labyrinths weren't meant to be easy. There were supposed to be tricks and traps and – and people! Why hadn't they met anyone? No guards, no goblins, not even a lowly worm. As for Hoggle, her oldest friend, her knight in rusty armour...why wasn't he here? And –

She choked back the thought before it could escape, unwilling to admit it, even to herself. But she had to face the truth. No matter how pompous, how arrogant, how frustrating or conceited or infuriatingly smug he might have been, he really had tried to live up to her expectations. Sarah bit her lip, trying to pretend that her traitorous thoughts weren't giving her away. But the words still lined up in her head, unbidden and unwanted.

_I wish the Goblin King were here._

* * *

The Queen sat back, smiling like a piranha. "They're here," she gloated. "Here at last."


	9. Chapter 9

The castle doors weren't quite as heavy as Sarah remembered them. The castle itself looked exactly as deserted as it had when she'd last been here. The hall was equally imposing, although the smell was much less noticeable. Over the stale stink of too many grubby little goblin bodies in one place, an icy-clean, floral sort of smell wafted. It put Sarah in mind of lipstick on a chicken – a crude attempt to mask how rank something really was with a thin veil of beauty. The feeble attempt to make the place seem _nice_ made bile rise in Sarah`s throat.

A wry smile snuck onto her face at the same time as a wry thought crept into her head. _I`ll bet that`s why the goblins all left – they couldn`t stand the stench._

"Are you quite all right, Sarah?"

Sarah turned to see her stepmother scrutinizing her. "You've been very quiet," Irene said, accusingly.

"I'm just...thinking," Sarah answered. There was no sound in the halls but her own voice. Why was it so quiet?

"Good, then, I suppose," Irene said, pulling herself into battle position. "Where will we find this Queen?"

Sarah pondered this. "I don't quite know. But the throne room is this way. I think we might find her there."

"Milady?" Sir Didymus bowed. "Do you require our assistance in this conquest?"

"Help?" Ludo asked eagerly.

Sarah looked down the long hall, to the gaping maw of the throne room. Her own words flickered through her mind. _I have to face him alone._

"Yes," she answered, "I would love your help."

"But, milady, I thought..."

 _That's the way it's done._ "No," Sarah stated firmly. "If she's not going to play by the rules then I'm not either. Please come back me up."

"Quite right. We shall fight to the death!" Sir Didymus waved his staff excitedly, and Ambrosius barked, backing up. Sir Didymus frowned disapprovingly. "Now, now, Ambrosius, don't you want to fight to the death for Sarah and the glory of the Labyrinth?"

Ambrosius shook his head.

Sarah laughed, despite the grim situation. "I hope no one will have to," she told the frightened sheepdog. "Come on, let's just get this over with."

The throne room was empty, and not in the way it had been when Sarah had seen it last. Then, it had been like a discarded pair of socks – it had seen a lot of activity, it had been vacated very recently, and now all that was left was a rather unpleasant odour. Now, it was clean, rather than full of old rubbish, and looked almost as though no one had used it since Sarah had defeated the Labyrinth.

Not quite so, she saw, as they rounded the corner and the throne itself came into view. The first thing she saw enraged her more than the ridiculous floral perfume, the empty city, the lack of challenge, the wrongness in the Labyrinth. Her brother, sitting slumped in an attitude of boredom and defeat beside her oldest friend, both chained at the foot of the throne.

The throne itself was empty.

"Toby!" Irene shouted, abandoning composure to run to her son.

Toby looked up, a startled expression giving way to cautious hope and finally amazed delight. "Mom?"

Sarah approached more slowly, looking all about her. Something about this scenario stank worse than the combination of flowers and stale goblin. "Hoggle? What's going on?"

He looked up at her, and the naked fear in his eyes stopped her in her tracks. "Sarah! You shouldn't have come, you should've left us!"

Sarah forced herself to laugh, but she had an uneasy feeling, like someone was looking over her shoulder. _Don't be silly,_ she told herself, and it sounded so good in her head that she said it aloud. "Don't be silly. Would you have left me?"

"Yes!"

"No, you wouldn't and didn't. I remember -"

"It's a trap!"

"Milady!" Sir Didymus shouted. Irene and Toby, who had been oblivious in their victory, were both roused by the shouting and turned, along with everyone else, to the door. Footsteps could be heard drawing nearer through the halls, echoing in time with the ringing sound of handclaps. A faint shimmer could be seen, as if of sunlight on snow, and then, clapping mockingly, a cruel smile twisting her perfect face, the Queen glided into view.

Sarah hated her on sight.

The Queen was flawless, beautiful and confident and glittering. She looked young and proud, with snowy-white, unblemished skin, a porcelain-doll face, and long, ebony-dark hair. Not a hair of her long, sleek mane was out of place; it lay docile and perfectly arranged in a pearl headdress that Sarah would have drooled over fifteen years ago and wasn't sure she wouldn't now. The Queen's willowy frame was wrapped in a white dress that glittered iridescent shades when she moved and left shining white silhouettes behind her. It was cut in a style that had gone out of fashion with Guinevere and come back into fashion with Lord of the Rings. Around her neck dangled a golden medallion, which Sarah had last seen worn by the Goblin King. The Queen carried herself very erect, pride and superiority written clearly in every gesture, every movement.

In short, she was everything Sarah had wanted to be at fifteen, everything that she had felt the lack of very keenly while running through the Labyrinth. She was even dressed as Sarah had daydreamed about, when she'd run through the park chasing owls and will-o'-the-wisps, when she'd tried in vain to make herself look like a fairy-tale princess with a handful of makeup and a few pictures of her mother, when she'd battled the goblin army in jeans and an old shirt, after giving up one glorious, shimmering dance with the Goblin King...

Who was not here. And this perfect, beautiful monster, whose very existence made Sarah feel small, had taken his place.

The hatred grew and deepened as the Queen stopped in the doorway, surveying the scene, and laughed pleasantly. Brushing Ludo and Sir Didymus aside as thought they were merely bothersome flies, she floated into the throne room and looked over the tableau before her. At close range, her sparkling perfection made Sarah keenly aware of her twelve-year-old robe and ratty slippers.

"Well. Look at the happy family," the Queen smirked.

"All right. You've had your fun. Let my friends go," Sarah said, sounding braver than she felt.

"Hmm. I hadn't thought your brother considered you a friend, or vice versa." The Queen raised an eyebrow questioningly. "Of whom do you speak?"

Sarah swallowed, throat suddenly dry. "Let Hoggle and Toby go, and we'll leave."

"I think not." The Queen stepped forward until she and Sarah were nearly touching, and put out one long, white finger to tap Sarah gently on the nose. The familiarity of the gesture took Sarah's breath away. "I think there is another reason you came, princess."

Something was not right.

Sarah tried to ignore it, to grasp onto that hate she'd felt at being put to shame by this woman before her. But it was slipping through her fingers, as that feeling of wrongness grew stronger. She'd misjudged something, missed something, somewhere along the way.

She jerked her face away, and so missed the look of sorrow and loss that flashed across the Queen's face for a mere instant, before being replaced by her doll-like mask. "I don't know what you're talking about," Sarah snapped.

"I think you do," the Queen countered, her voice treacly.

"I do not!" Sarah shouted. "I did not come here for that arrogant, self-centred, priggish, constantly-costume-changing JERK!"

The Queen stood frozen for an instant, blinking in shock. Then she laughed, looking slightly more human in her mirth. "Oh no!" she gasped, between bouts of laughter. "Oh, good grief. I didn't expect you to think of that," she continued, tactfully avoiding flat-out mention of the Goblin King. Sarah wondered why. "No. My dear girl, I thought you'd finally come for me."

There was silence.

"...What?" Sarah finally asked. "Why would I -"

The Queen smiled benevolently. "Sarah, I've been waiting nearly thirty years for this day. You must believe me when I say I didn't want to leave you. But I had to do it, do you see?"

A horrible pit of black dread was gnawing just below Sarah's stomach, threatening to swallow it. "No," she whispered, her throat tightening until words couldn't properly escape. It was as if the rest of the world had fallen away, leaving only she and...who? "You can't be."

"Darling," the Queen said. A rosy tint had come to her pale cheeks, and her dark eyes were sparkling animatedly. She looked more human than when she'd walked through the door, and more familiar, as well.

A single word managed to fight its way free of Sarah's mouth. "Mom?"

The Queen put out her arms, as if to pull her daughter into an embrace. "Princess," she whispered.

Sarah stepped back, unwilling to take part in a hug with this...woman who had stolen her brother, locked up her friend, wrecked the Labyrinth, and hidden away the Goblin King. "It's really you?"

The Queen dropped her arms, apparently seeing this. "Yes. It's me. Sarah, it's been so long..."

Sarah stepped quickly back, and found that she was running up against the steps leading up to the throne. Happiness had caused the mask of the woman before her to drop, to crack, letting a bit of the old Linda Williams shine through. Sarah felt sick. This was her happy, laughing mother, the fairy princess, the ray of sunshine who had blessed Sarah with life and Robert with her brilliance, only to dance away again? This was the dream mother Sarah'd tried to emulate, the actress in whose footsteps Sarah gladly would have followed?

"Why?" she asked, and was pleased to hear that her voice didn't waver.

The Queen's smile was a ray of winter sunlight. "Why did I leave you? Oh, princess, I had the greatest adventure -"

"That's not going to work this time," Sarah spat, with what was perhaps unwonted venom. Apologetically, she explained, "Why did you steal Toby? How did you get to this point in the first place? What's going on here, anyway?"

The Queen's smile turned regretful. "It's something of a long story. It starts with a silly girl, who wasn't sure what she really wanted."

"I'll say." Irene's voice broke through the stillness. Sarah jumped – she'd completely forgotten that her stepmother was there. "And I dare say you'd like us to think that you've changed since then." She sounded thoroughly disapproving.

The Queen turned to face Irene, and her face no longer looked remotely like Sarah's mother. She was wintry again, perfect, her mask in place. When she spoke, her voice was cold and haughty.

"You have been a thorn in my side ever since you entered my life," the Queen pronounced, her tone terrible.

Irene laughed. "Your life? You abandoned your husband and daughter, in case you don't remember. I hardly think you can just claim them again, as if they haven't got feelings or brains." She squared her shoulders, and planted both hands firmly on her hips, fixing the Queen with a look that had cowed Sarah completely at the age of fourteen.

It didn't work. The Queen drew herself up like a peacock, and said coldly, "I have no further use for you. I can truthfully say that I am glad to finally be rid of you." Irene's mouth opened to retort, but the Queen's hand flashed out, and then only a small crystal ball clacked against the flagstones where Irene had stood.

The Queen stalked over, ignoring the shocked yells that had broken out, and picked the crystal up, scrutinized it, then tucked it away by some sleight-of-hand into her dress. "Well, that's taken care of," she said briskly. "Oh, will all of you be quiet?" She waved a hand, and Sarah found that her tongue wouldn't move. Everyone else in the room seemed to have been struck by the same curious affliction, because silence fell once again. The Queen smiled approvingly, and nodded. "Now. Sarah, you wanted to hear the story."

Sarah nodded mutely. Even if she'd been able to speak, she had nothing to say. As a girl, she'd often wished that something like this would happen, that her mother would come back, banish her evil stepmother, and they could all live happily ever after. But now, as before, she realised too late that her wish wasn't what she wanted at all. And this time, there didn't seem to be a Labyrinth to run to get her stepmother back.

The Queen gently pushed Sarah sideways, away from the steps, and ascended them gracefully, lowering herself imperiously onto the throne. She pulled the crystal from the folds of her gown, and stared into it, as if contemplating her own history written there. All eyes turned to her, almost involuntarily. She commanded attention. In that long moment, Sarah could see how she could have been a great actress while she had still trod the boards.

Then the Queen looked up, and began. "Once upon a time, a silly girl wished for the goblins to take her child."


	10. Chapter 10

Linda Avery was the golden girl, the ray of unpredictable light in an otherwise dull and monotonous world. And, like gold, like sunlight, she was difficult to grasp, and nearly impossible to hold. But Robert Williams tried. And like any hero seeking fire, he caught her, for a while.

They were married. They had a child. They named her Sarah.

Sarah was, in Linda's eyes, the biggest mistake of her life.

It wasn't that she didn't love the girl. But Linda was still a girl herself. In the bloom of youth and her career, her future spread before her, shimmering like a soap bubble, just as promising, just as beautiful – and just as fragile. Robert had wanted a baby, and Linda, besotted as she was with him at the time, had blithely agreed, neither knowing or caring what an impact Sarah would have on her life. Not really understanding how much love and time and sheer effort it took to raise a child.

Linda's career fell by the wayside. The director of the play she was starring in threatened to cut her once, twice, thrice. The last time she turned up late to rehearsal, arriving just as it ended, he fired her on the spot.

Linda felt horribly wronged. It was not her fault that Sarah had been crying, refusing to be comforted. It was not her fault that the car had broken down on the way out of the drive. It was not her fault that she hadn't had time to practice her lines, busy as she was with both the baby and the household chores. She simply wasn't cut out to be a housewife. It just wasn't fair.

She was in a foul mood when she arrived back at home. Flinging the script that she'd forgotten to return onto the hall table, she brushed off her husband's queries and stormed upstairs, to the master bedroom and her sanctuary.

She tried to immerse herself in a paperback romance novel, but the characters were bland and lifeless and the plot was ludicrous. What had she expected from drivel titled _The Italian Billionaire's Secret Love-Child_? Tossing the book carelessly aside, she stalked over to the bookshelf and selected a well-worn red volume, with the title written across the cover in gold ink.

She'd been finding peace in the adventures of a princess lost in the goblins' kingdom for nearly an hour, when Sarah started to bawl. "Robert!" Linda shouted, but all that happened was that Sarah's wailing grew louder. Linda levered herself out of her comfortable chair with a modicum of difficulty and flounced over to the door. Opening it wide, she shouted down the stairs, "Robert!" Again, there was no answer.

Sighing heavily, Linda stomped across the hall into Sarah's room. The lights were all out, and Linda tripped over a teddy bear as she entered the room. She mumbled an indistinct curse, threw on the lights, and picked the bear up, placing it and the book carefully onto the changing table beside the crib. "Oh, stop it, stop it," she instructed her daughter, who continued to scream.

Frustrated, Linda scooped Sarah out of the crib and began to pace up and down, absentmindedly rocking the child as she walked. "You know, you made me lose my job today," Linda told the baby. "You made me lose my job, my figure, my friends... You know, Sarah, you're really a nuisance."

Sarah, as if understanding her mother's words, let out an ear-splitting screech. Linda winced.

"What is it you want, huh? Bottle? Does your diaper need changing? Are you colicky?" Linda rolled her eyes and shifted Sarah in her grip. "Want to hear a story, princess? Do you want to hear a story?"

Sarah shrieked, then began sobbing. Linda began the story anyway. Sometimes the sound of her voice would calm the girl. Of course, there was always the possibility that Sarah was teething, in which case, nothing Linda did here would do any good unless there was something for Sarah to bite on. "Once upon a time, a beautiful princess was trapped in a marriage to a wicked king, and forced to bear him an heir. Once the baby was born, the princess became no better than a slave. She had to cook and clean and muck out the privies for the wicked king, and always had to take care of the baby." Here, Linda's improvisational skill ran out, and she fell back on her favourite fairy tale. "But the King of the Goblins had fallen in love with the princess, and he had granted her certain powers. And she knew that, if she wished it, he would take the baby away to his castle, and keep it there for ever and ever, and turn it into a goblin."

Sarah's wail resembled that of an air-raid siren.

Linda blew a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. It fell immediately back into her vision, and she glared at it as if, just by looking at it, she could frighten it into place. She lowered Sarah back into her crib, irritated and angry and cursing her stupidity for having a child in the first place.

"Who am I kidding?" she asked the empty room. The only answer was Sarah's rising screams. "I'm no princess, and I chained myself to you of my own free will." She untangled Sarah's fingers from her long, dark hair. "Let go, princess. I'm going to get you a chew toy." Linda leaned over to the change table, grabbed the bear and the book, and tucked them in with Sarah, who grabbed the book and immediately stuck a corner into her mouth.

Linda screamed to rival Sarah's earlier cries, and whipped the book out of the baby's reach.

"You wretched child!" Linda shouted, anger and sleep loss finally getting the best of her. "I wish you'd never been born. I wish the goblins really would take you away! Right – now!" she spat through clenched teeth.

The lights flickered, dimmed, then went out. Sarah's cries stopped just as abruptly, as though something had cut them off.

Fighting down a rising sense of panic, Linda ran for the light switch, her own words ringing through her head. _And if she wished it, he would take the baby away to his castle..._

"No, no," she whispered, groping blindly for the lights. She found the switch, and flicked it up and down, with no results. _And keep it there for ever and ever..._

"I didn't mean it!" she shouted at whoever or whatever listened in the darkness.

A sudden gust of wind blew the window open with a bang. Something fluttered into the room, and Linda whirled to face it. And enormous barn owl had somehow got through the window into her daughter's room.

There was a flash, a shower of sparkles that made Linda cough, and when she looked up, it wasn't an owl that stood before her, but a man.

She wasn't sure, for a moment, if he was real. He was looking away from her, in that disdainful way that Linda hated, but it did give her an opportunity to study him. His hair was long and blonde, and layered in such a way that his head looked like a dandelion clock just before it exploded. A high-collared, faintly glittering cape fluttered like butterfly wings in the gale from the open window, curling around his body like early morning mist. Underneath the ostentatiously fantastical cape, he wore a simple but still devilishly handsome silvery poet shirt and...Linda blinked. Yes, those were black spandex pants. She quickly averted her eyes, feeling a blush start the slow journey from her toes towards her cheeks.

He crossed his arms, looking thoroughly put-upon, and turned to Linda, sighing heavily. She wanted to scream. She wanted to hit him. She wanted to make him tell her where he'd taken Sarah. But her tongue felt leaden in her mouth. All she could do was stare.

He glared at the wall opposite him as though it had personally offended him, then appeared to lose some personal battle, and turned to Linda. "I really wasn't expecting to be called tonight."

Linda gulped, suddenly finding it very difficult to compose herself. If she hadn't been married, and he hadn't just had his goblins spirit away her daughter, she would have been powerfully attracted to the man before her. His harassed-yet-coolheaded expression and curiously intense mismatched eyes reminded her of the actor she'd been playing opposite until today. And, in that comparison, she suddenly found what she needed to return her composure and her voice. _It's a role, Linda. He's already the Goblin King. Be the princess. God knows you've done it enough times in your head._

"You're the Goblin King, aren't you," she said, her voice sounding far braver than she felt. In her mind, the story hidden in the book she gripped like a talisman whipped past her. He inclined his head in acknowledgement.

"I didn't mean it," Linda repeated. "I love her. Please bring her back."

He smirked, and took a few steps forward, heels clacking on the floorboards. Linda glanced down to see hobnailed boots making a mess of the beautiful hardwood flooring. He stopped right in front of her, so that they stood face-to-face. Or, not quite, since he was a few inches taller than she.

"Oh, but you did mean it," he answered softly, his voice low like a lover's. "Or I wouldn't have been dragged out of bed to come and make an appearance."

Linda's fingers tightened around the book as though it were trying to escape. "All right. So maybe I haven't been quite the mother she deserves." _No, no, no! You're doing this all wrong. Don't let him get under your skin. Be the princess._ "But she is still my daughter." Linda tossed her head back proudly, and stood very straight, as if a change of posture would give her those extra inches and put her on eye level with the Goblin King. "And I would like her back." Even as she said it, Linda knew how this conversation would end.

"And what if I don't want to give her back?" he asked her. "What if I prefer to keep your darling daughter? I'm sure she'll be quite the beauty once she's grown."

Linda felt almost faint with fear and some other heady emotion as she said, "I'll do whatever it takes."

His eyes bored into her, blue and green with equal intensity. "Are you sure? If you choose to battle me, it will be on my ground, on my terms...on my time." He sighed heavily. "I wish you'd chosen another day to start this. But no one answers a Goblin King's wishes. Are you sure you wouldn't accept a trade?"

A gesture produced a crystal ball, which he twitched back and forth from one hand to the other almost absentmindedly. Linda found her eye drawn to its fathomless depths, and shook her head to clear it. "No," she said weakly.

A frown darkened his fine features. "You refuse my offer?"

"Yes. I want my daughter back."

He sighed, sounding put-upon once more. "Very well."

A cloud of sparkles filled the room again. Linda blinked, trying to clear her vision. When she was able to see properly again, Sarah's room had disappeared like a dream. Linda was standing on a small rise, overlooking a vast labyrinth. Seeing it laid out like this before her made Linda want to scream and run home. She hadn't expected it to be so intimidating, so complex, so _big_. Desperate for reassurance, she tightened her grip on the book, to discover that it was no longer there. She turned, fully ready to go back and get it, only to see him standing before her.

"You can't bring that book with you," he said crossly, advancing towards her. "And it wouldn't help you if you had it. You're on your own now."

Linda knew that her face betrayed none of the fear she was feeling – she was too well-trained an actress. But it ate away at her resolve, under her brave face.

"Of course, you could always turn back now, and leave the child to me."

She shook her head, not trusting her voice.

He brushed past her, muttering, "I thought not." Linda turned quickly, unwilling to let him out of her sight. "Very well. You have thirteen hours in which to defeat the Labyrinth and claim the child." His cloak swished through space, revealing a clock face hovering in thin air. Both the hands were frozen at – Linda blinked – thirteen. "If you fail, your daughter is mine." His voice echoed slightly, as though he were getting farther and farther away from her. Then she realised that he was. She could see the Labyrinth through him. After a few seconds, he had faded completely, the clock with him.

Linda shivered despite the warm breeze. Now that he was gone, it felt less like a play and more real. "Okay," she whispered to herself, "you can do this. You made a mistake, and now it's up to you to fix it." She scanned the walls of the Labyrinth that lay before her. "It doesn't look so hard. Just keep one hand on the wall, and you'll be at the centre in no time."

She hesitated a moment longer before setting off down the hill.


	11. Chapter 11

Thirteen long hours later, exhaustion, hunger, and insecurity had done their worst. Linda was dirty, tired, sore, starving – and triumphant. The castle doors lay open before her.

Her feet made barely any sound against the stone stairs as she climbed up to the door and ran through, feeling victory in every step. Once she got home, what a story she'd have to tell Robert! And Sarah – well, wouldn't she just thrill to be part of a fairy tale like this?

She ran through the empty throne room, only wondering for a split second where its inhabitants might be. A door stood open across the room, and she ran straight through it and up the staircase behind it, not pausing to think of what manner of trap might lie in wait. Her heart pounded in her throat, every one of her senses alert to the time pressing against her. If she was too late...

As if in answer to her unspoken fear, her steps slowed as though she were running through treacle. Somewhere behind her, a clock chimed.

_No, no, no, no, no!_

Ahead of her, the spiral staircase she was climbing began to crumble, She turned around, to see the steps behind her falling away as well. A few seconds later, the cracks met beneath her feet, and Linda fell through darkness.

Her fall was arrested by something, she couldn't say what, beneath her feet. Surface in the purely geometric sense. A sound of wings, a shower of sparkles, and he stood before her again. The Goblin King, magnificent, and terrifying in his magnificence. Linda suddenly felt as though she hadn't stopped falling, after all.

"Through dangers untold -" she began, but he held up a gloved hand, one finger raised. She fell silent again. Somewhere in the darkness, the clock continued to chime.

'It's too late, Linda," he said, and his casually brutal tone made her want to scream. "Your time is up. The child is mine."

"Sarah," Linda snapped. "Her name is Sarah."

The Goblin King smirked. "It doesn't matter now. She belongs to me."

"No."

He raised one eyebrow, gave her a look of condescension. "There are rules, Linda. It would be...unfair for you to break them now."

She could have spat in his face. Taking a deep breath, she stepped forwards toward the Goblin King and prepared to do what was either the bravest or stupidest thing she'd ever do. "No. Spare my daughter. Take me instead."

Both of his eyebrows shot up at this statement, but that was the only sign of surprise he showed. "Are you sure? It's not too late to turn back, you know."

Linda stopped, swallowing the blind agreement that had been on the tip of her tongue. _It makes a good story, yes, but you won't be around to tell it. Don't go through with this. Let him keep –_

And she came abruptly back to her senses. "I'm sure."

"Tell me, then, why should I accept your offer?" he asked, face like a thunderstorm.

 _Because she has her whole life ahead of her. Because I'm her mother, and I ought to put her first, at least this once. Because I can survive, can take care of myself. Because she's just a baby. Because she's my daughter._ But what she said was, "Because if you don't, you may never know if she'd be beautiful or not."

His thunderstorm frown morphed into one of confusion.

"'He would keep it for ever and ever, and turn it into a goblin'. There are rules, you know. You can't just break them."

He stalked towards her, beginning to circle her. Linda turned to keep him within her line of sight, and found herself twirling on the spot. "Actually, I can. That's what you've done, offering me this trade, isn't it?"

"No. That fits into the story." Linda was becoming slightly dizzy.

"Story? You still think this is a story? You, who defeated my Labyrinth? You, who saw it all unroll before you? You , who lived through it – you think this is a story?" He laughed. 'This is life, Linda. And the difference between life and stories is that life isn't fair, and it doesn't always make sense."

 _I'm trying to be noble and self-sacrificing, you stupid -_ Linda bit back a rant, and instead said, "I would give you myself, instead of my daughter. Surely that's fair."

He merely looked at her with those mismatched eyes, and once again she felt she was falling. "you refused my gift. I wonder why you seem to think I'll take your offer."

Blinding clarity flashed through Linda's mind. "I'll take your...gift if you will release Sarah. Just let her go, and I'll do whatever you want."

He grinned lopsidedly, mirthless and condemning. "That sounds slightly more appealing. But whatever will your husband think?"

There was only one possible answer in Linda's mind. "He'll wait for me. He'll be devastated, but he'll know I'm coming back."

The Goblin King's smile grew wider. "You're quite sure."

"Yes."

"All right, then, I accept." A flick of his wrist, and the crystal appeared, flying off the tips of his fingers and through the empty air between them. Linda caught it without thinking. It felt cold and smooth and unpleasantly like polished bone.

"And my daughter?" she queried.

He waved a hand dismissively. "Safe and sound at home, sleeping like a baby. She won't remember anything of her time here."

Linda nodded, feeling slightly numb, as though this were a nightmare she couldn't quite wake up from.

"Now." He gestured to the crystal clutched tightly in her hands. "Look into it."

Linda obliged, holding the ball up to her eye and peering through it. "All I see is you. Upside down."

He sounded suddenly most impatient as he instructed her, "Not through it, into it."

Linda lowered the crystal from her eye, apprehensive. She looked down into it until vertigo threatened to overwhelm her.

"Deeper." His tone was commanding, and Linda obeyed without questioning.

She fell, head over heels, toward a point of light that she hadn't noticed before. As she drew closer, she slowly became aware of music, emanating from that tiny dot of light.

And as she fell into that light, she realised that she was wearing an enormous, sparkling gown.


	12. Chapter 12

Sarah felt slightly shell-shocked, as though the wind had just been knocked out of her. _This can't be happening,_ she thought automatically, and then silenced that irritating little voice of rationality. She wondered why it hadn't died out long ago. Maybe it had been gathering strength as more and more time went by without anything downright strange happening.

Part of her wanted to run up and hug her long-lost mother, beg her never to leave again, forgive her instantly for everything. But another, slightly larger part of herself held her back. _She didn't want you,_ it whispered. _She wanted the goblins to take you away. She couldn't handle you._

 _I wished the goblins would take Toby away,_ Sarah reminded herself. _That doesn't make me a bad person. And it's not her fault. She only did it to save me._

_What's to say she wouldn't have left anyway, when she got fed up or bored? What's to say she won't still?_

_She's my mother. If I can't trust her, who can I trust?_

But still she stood as if rooted to the floor, struck dumb by magic, and gnawed at by that tiny voice in the back of her mind.

_She didn't want you._

"I think I may have gone a bit mad, trapped in the constant swirl and opulence of that ball," the woman seated on the throne continued. Hoggle nodded meaningfully, but stopped short when she fixed him with an icy glare. "Oh, it was wonderful at first. Everyone paying attention to me, dancing the night away with handsome men, shimmering and laughing and capturing every heart..." Her wistful sigh sounded too theatrical to quite be real, as was proven when, with the next sentence, her voice hardened, grew cold and proud again. "But it became torturous. I couldn't leave, couldn't rest, couldn't refuse a dance, couldn't see you or your father, couldn't know how you were. I consoled myself by thinking of you two, how you were growing up, how you would be becoming a young woman. I celebrated every one of your birthdays," she said with a radiant smile, and Sarah nearly bit through her tongue. The beautiful construct before her looked more like the old Linda Williams than ever.

Sarah felt ill. Why was this so difficult? She was acting like a child. She ought to be able to handle meeting her mother again.

But she wasn't.

"When I saw you there in the ballroom, I thought he'd caught you as well. I couldn't stand it. My heart just broke."

Sarah tried to speak, and found that she still couldn't. _That's nonsense,_ she thought rebelliously. _You weren't there!_

"You didn't see me, of course," the Queen continued, as though she'd reached into Sarah's mind and found the doubt wriggling there. "He didn't want you to. It would have ruined his lovely plan."

Sarah thought back to a memory that was still a haze, now even worse as clouded by age, to the heady twirl and swirl of a ball she had not so much experienced as hallucinated. It was possible, she decided.

"When the spell broke, I thought I'd finally lost my mind. It wasn't until I found myself alone, crumpled on cold stone in an unfamiliar tower, that I realised I was free. I quickly surmised what must have happened. I had been so sure that you could defeat the Goblin King, and now you'd done it! I could go home, and we could be again the happy family we once were."

_Were we ever, really, a happy family?_

"But I was appalled to discover that I couldn't leave the Labyrinth. I had forgotten the way, and no matter where I turned, all I met were dead ends and switchbacks that led me right back to the Goblin City. At first, I thought it was merely my poor sense of direction. But then I began to suspect that the spell was still working, although the illusion had worn away and the actual bonds were weakening with each passing day.

"I began to insinuate myself into goblin society now, mostly to avoid detection. I felt quite sure that if the Goblin King found me, I'd be locked away again, and this time in a prison far more substantial than an idle daydream of a masquerade ball. Having even some degree of freedom and control over my own life was something I was not willing to sacrifice again. But from the gossip I was hearing, it seemed that perhaps he wouldn't care even if I danced in front of him wearing a grass skirt and a bird on my head." She smirked. "They said that the mighty Goblin King had been utterly defeated by a mere girl."

Sarah swallowed, with difficulty, past a sudden and quite unprecedented lump in her throat.

"They said he sat alone in the castle, trying to figure out where he went wrong and why. They said his temper grew shorter by the day. And some of the very bravest whispered that he was losing control over his Labyrinth, his subjects, even his magic. That sounded especially intriguing. And all, they said, for the sake of a silly girl."

 _He went all to pieces over me?_ Try as she might, Sarah couldn't be entirely sorry. A tiny part of her was dancing triumphantly and gleefully. She shook her head, trying to clear out the troublesome thought. _You're engaged, remember? You wouldn't want him to think of you like that. Besides, that was a long time ago._

_Wasn't it?_

"I felt that now, while his powers were weakened, I might stand the best chance of escape. And so, I sought out what might be the one person in the Labyrinth, other than the Goblin King himself, who knew how I could escape the spell holding me. The Wiseman."

At this, Hoggle attempted to scoff loudly, but since everyone in the room was still under a silencing spell, it didn't work so well.

"Of course," the Queen said pointedly, "the goblins think little of him. They are small-minded, petty little creatures who have can't comprehend advice of a philosophical nature, and have no use for advice on magic, since they know nothing of it themselves. But I had a most urgent need to know more about the whys and hows of magic, and so I found the Wiseman to be my most knowledgeable ally." She paused as though for dramatic effect, and then went on. "What he told me was most surprising. It seems that somehow, when you, Sarah, broke down the Goblin King's defences, I was able to steal some of his magic." She smiled as smugly as a cat with a bowl of cream, and waved the hand holding the crystal. "Of course, I couldn't use these yet. I couldn't do anything with my magic yet, except, apparently, make myself very inconspicuous. But while the Goblin King moped, he wasn't paying very close attention to the world around him. I was able to siphon away his power, little by little, until I could actually use it. Perhaps I could have escaped at this point, but it didn't seem to matter quite so much after I scryed on you for the first time." Her pretty face crumpled like an unwanted drawing being squeezed into a ball to throw away. "There was another woman! My husband had forgotten me, had moved on with his life! He had another child! He'd managed to completely replace us!" She turned mournful eyes on Sarah, who suddenly felt quite horribly guilty. Hadn't she thought the same thing, once, when she was being forced to watch Toby while her father and stepmother went out yet again? When she was having a bad day and Toby was eating up her father's attention? On lonely Valentine's Days when she'd sat alone in her room, listening to angry music and pretending she didn't believe in fairy-tale happy endings? Whenever she was feeling good and sorry for herself?

The Queen looked down at the crystal in her hand, as though reliving bad memories. Finally, she shook herself, the mask falling back into place, covering her moment of vulnerability. "So, in that moment, my thoughts turned from escape to revenge."

Sarah barely heard the next part of the tale, concerned as it was with carefully-laid plans and the learning of magic. _This is all your fault,_ her whirling thoughts chorused. _All your fault, all your fault. It was for your sake she got herself trapped, for your sake your mother left you. You drove her slightly mad, you drove her to become this. And then, you let her out, you helped her get magic. It is your fault that Jareth is probably locked up somewhere horrible, your fault that Toby is here, your fault that Irene is gone, your fault that the Labyrinth is broken._

_Everything has gone wrong and it's all your fault._

Sarah blinked the first traces of tears from her eyes. _Okay. Enough of this self-pity. I didn't do this. I may have helped it happen, but I didn't do it. I can't blame myself. I just have to_ do _something about it._

"So, once I had the Lords' and Ladies' support," the Queen continued, apparently oblivious to Sarah's turmoil, "I struck. I concealed myself in the image of an insignificant goblin, and entered the castle undetected and unhindered. Once inside, I disguised myself as you and sought out the Goblin King.

"Had I chosen the image of anyone else, he would have seen through my ruse immediately. It was his magic, after all. But he didn't realise that I had so much of it, or that I could use it. He didn't realise until it was far too late that I was not you. He, who had crafted a world of dreams, had finally fallen to them." She laughed pleasantly, like someone enjoying a good joke. "And he was so eager to believe the lie that he welcomed his own doom in through the front door. So you see, Sarah, you've freed me more than once."

Sarah found that she couldn't help but regret it. This wasn't what she'd expected, wasn't what she'd hoped for. _But then, isn't the one lesson you're supposed to learn from fairy tales "Be careful what you wish for"? I know it was for me._

"Questions?" the Queen asked, and then, "Oh, I forgot." She waved a hand vaguely, and Sarah found her tongue suddenly loosed. She wanted to start shouting, but something held her back. Now was not the time for a screaming match. Now was the time for answers, for heroics, and for getting everyone the heck out of there safely. There'd be time to scream later.

"All right. So you kicked Jareth off the throne, and got your revenge on my stepmother," Sarah began, sounding, she realised, for all the world like a belligerent teenager. "Why? What do you want with Toby? What's your grand scheme now?"

It was the Queen who smiled back at Sarah, a tight-lipped, perfect illusion, not the bright, erratic smile of a mother with love to spare but no commitment. "Since I'm not part of the royal succession of the Goblin Kingdom, I couldn't take the throne and keep it. I had to find an heir, someone the Goblin King had already chosen, someone who could become part of the succession. I think they worded it that vaguely on purpose, just to irritate anyone who had to follow that rule. I finally found the answers I needed in a library, here in the castle, of all places. The whole place was mouldering, but the books had probably been preserved by magic, otherwise they would've been little heaps of dust long ago." She shook her head sadly, a little bit of her personality breaking through the mask for half a second before retreating again. "It seems that only a stolen child can rule the Labyrinth.

"I considered choosing you, for a long time. But it didn't seem quite right, it didn't suit the story. I knew you'd hate me if I forced you into it. Also, if I stole you away, your father would be disconsolate, but I doubt very much your stepmother would have cared. And I so wanted to hurt her, just once, before I put her from my mind completely."

 _Would she really not have cared?_ Sarah wondered. _I thought so when I was fifteen. But I'm not so sure now._ The mental image of Irene nearly running headlong into the bog swam to the forefront of her mind. _Yeah, that was for Toby. But I think she might care more about both him and me than she lets on._

"I knew from watching you, and from what I'd pieced together, that you had wished your brother into the Labyrinth once, and that if something should happen to him, both you and my replacement would come to his aid, no matter what. He's actually been quite agreeable company, except for one rather pathetic and half-hearted escape attempt. If he were actually going to inherit the goblin kingdom, I'd be more worried. But luckily, he was only the bait."

The Queen aimed her sweetest, most radiant smile in Sarah's direction, almost like an offensive weapon.

"What do you want from me, then?" Sarah asked, apprehension and creeping dread coiling around the guilt hanging heavily in her chest, turning it as hot and sharp as an arrow.

"I want to offer you a choice, Sarah. In fact, the same choice that I had to make. A stolen child can sit upon the goblin throne. Will it be your brother, or will it be you?"


	13. Chapter 13

Irene was woken by light hitting her face. The air around her smelled of dust, old basements, rust, and enchantment. How she knew the last, she'd no idea, but it wasn't unlike the sickly-sweet stench in that castle.

"So. It wasn't a dream, then," she said to no-one in particular and opened her eyes.

There was a grate directly above her head, letting in a shaft of light which illuminated dust motes dancing in the air above her eyes, and obscured the grate itself and whatever might be above it. From what Irene could tell, however, the grate was quite firmly set in the stone, and too far up to reach.

She sat up, noticing a twinge of pain where one of her hairpins had apparently gotten between her falling head and the stone beneath it. Oh well. There'd be plenty of time to worry about that later.

Irene looked around. No immediate danger presented itself, but then, she still couldn't see more than a foot in front of her face. Someone had apparently seen fit to include a grate for fresh air and light, but it was still mostly dark in the hole. Irene wondered if she wasn't underground.

She stood up carefully, making sure not to bang her head on an overhang. The grate had looked pretty high up, but there was no guarantee that the rest of the ceiling was at the same height. As she reached about, feeling in the dark for walls, her hand fell on what further examination proved to be a box of matches. Irene lit one with some difficulty, and managed to find and light a candle that had been sitting next to the matches on the third try.

The room in which she found herself looked more like a cave than anything, a place hollowed out of solid stone by natural forces. It certainly didn't seem man-made, although people had obviously pressed it into service. A length of iron chain hung from the wall not far from where she'd landed, and creaked rustily when she touched it. Cobwebs dangled from the ceiling (which, Irene was glad to see, she'd been right about) like tattered tapestries. The walls glistened slickly with water. The whole place smelled of damp and disuse. There was something almost pitiable about it, alone and forgotten.

Irene turned, and jumped when something moved. She had to laugh, however, when she discovered what it was. Tangled in multiple lengths of heavy iron chain, looking thoroughly uncomfortable, a large barn owl was perched on an outcrop of stone.

"How on Earth did you get down here?" Irene demanded, and then laughed self-consciously. "Oh, just look at me. Trapped in some sort of fairy tale, talking to an owl. Irene, you've finally gone off your rocker." She shook her head, and the hair pin poked the tender spot on her head. "Why would anyone bother to put an owl in chains, anyway?" she muttered, as she freed the hairpin from where it was being a nuisance.

Now, in some dank, forgotten cave, under the unblinking gaze of a large bird, Irene finally realised just how ridiculous her predicament really was. "It's something about Sarah," she surmised at last. "She just believes so totally in whatever comes her way that you find yourself being drawn in. I mean, just look at me! My hair's a mess, this skirt is destined for the dustbins, and I'm imprisoned in Fairyland." She laughed again, but exhaustion was creeping up behind it. "And to think I thought her silly for believing in fairy tales!"

She sat down, looking for a dry place to spare her poor skirt further damage, and then, without thinking, smoothed it out over her knees. "I wouldn't have come, if it wasn't for Sarah," she told the owl, which stared at her blankly. "I would've laughed, said there's no such thing as magic, and then called the police. But for some reason, I didn't even wonder that we'd just walked through a mirror, that we were storming some...goblin castle or something. It just made sense, somehow."

Irene sighed. It had been a long night. She'd no idea how long she'd spent running around a nonsensical labyrinth looking for her son. She also didn't know how long she'd been unconscious, but it definitely hadn't been long enough.

"You know, I envy her," she said to the shaft of light from the grate, and was surprised to hear the words coming out of her mouth. She'd never thought them before, not really thought them, but now that they were said, she realised that they were true. "She just never grew up. I wanted her to, to get over her silly infatuation with goblins and magic and who knows what else, to try to prepare her for the real world. But she never did. She's lucky, to be that way. If she ever actually writes that book she's always talking about, she'll be a huge success. She's got a woman's mind and a girl's heart, and that's a powerful combination."

And then Irene wondered, can owls nod? She didn't think they could. Something to do with the way their necks were built. But it looked like, out of the corner of her eye, the one sitting beside her had just proven the scientists wrong.

"I thought she'd get hurt if she kept believing in things, if she couldn't look at the world the way it really is," Irene continued, discovering that it felt good to just talk, even if the audience was only the close, fusty air and a nocturnal bird of prey. "Just take that mother of hers. Anyone could tell that she was flighty, that she had no conception of thinking of others, no sense of responsibility. But Sarah believed in her whole-heartedly, believed whatever ridiculous tale anyone told her about her mother, anything but the truth: that Linda Avery abandoned Sarah and her father, and she wasn't coming back!"

Irene realised she was shouting, and swallowed the ball of anger that had risen in her throat. "Anyway," she continued, in a more level tone, "Sarah wouldn't hear a word against her mother. She still won't. And no matter what I do, there's still a part of her that thinks of me as the evil stepmother. She's just never heard of any other kind."

Irene sat perfectly still for a few long moments, letting self-pity and tiredness course through her. Then she let out a long sigh, and levered herself to her feet. "And you can see how that one turned out. Linda's on the goblin throne, Sarah's learning that not all fairy tales are true, and I'm locked in a cave with an owl." She pulled another pin from her hair. "But the way I see it, if that woman has a good reason to lock up a bird, it's an equally good reason for me to unlock it."

After unwinding several layers of chain, she found a huge iron padlock holding the owl's talons in shackles. Oddly enough, it hadn't tried to peck her or scratch her or anything else she would have expected from a wild animal. But then, Irene supposed, this was a fairy tale, after all. Animals in fairy tales were practically human. "Ah," she muttered. "Now, let's see if I'm any good at picking locks."


	14. Chapter 14

Even if he hadn't been silenced by magic, Toby would have been shocked speechless. _Low blow, lady,_ he thought glumly. No matter how this ended, he was going to have one hell of a time explaining it. Coming home without his sister, or not coming home at all? Either way, he was going to catch hell from his mom. His dad, probably not so much, but he knew from long experience that upsetting his mother meant a harsh grounding, and this definitely qualified.

Then Toby remembered. His mother was in no position to ground anyone. She was mysteriously missing, thanks to this bloody witch who was trying to guilt Sarah into trading herself for him. _Don't you dare do it, Sarah,_ he mouthed at his half-sister, but she wasn't looking at him. She only had eyes for the woman claiming to be her mother. _It's a trap, or something! I'll figure this out, she can't be serious, just don't listen to her._

Sarah took a breath as if preparing to speak, but then stopped, hesitated, apparently reconsidering what she was about to say. _Don't do it,_ Toby shouted at her without saying a word.

"If I do this...you'll let Toby go?" Sarah asked, and Toby thought a very bad word.

The Queen inclined her head regally. Her expression was smug, confident, and not very nice. She was so sure already that she'd won.

"And my friends?" Sarah demanded, her voice shaking a little. It might have been rage, might have been fear, might really have been anything. "You won't hurt them? Will you let them go too?"

Another nod.

_Don't you get it? If you take her offer, she's won!_

"What about my stepmother?"

The Queen's lips curled in distaste. Toby wished they'd fall off. "I make no promises."

Sarah glanced apologetically over at her little brother for the briefest of moments before switching her focus back to the Queen. "I accept. I'll take Toby's place."

_Damn!_

The Queen rose from the throne, hair and skirts swirling, arms open for an embrace which didn't come. Sarah stood her ground, arms folded, one toe tapping impatiently. "Now let them go."

The Queen smiled brightly, its warmth in sharp contrast to her icy looks. "Of course." She snapped her fingers. Two monstrous little goblins scurried out from somewhere in the background, and began to unlock Toby and Hoggle. A wave from the Queen, and suddenly the room was full of incoherent and angry shouts from the little fox-knight. Toby felt his own voice return, and, as the shackles fell from his hands, he jumped up, eager to confront his sister, to somehow persuade her to take it back. "Don't!"

Sarah didn't even look at him. "I'll be fine. Just find your mom and get out of here."

"No way! I am not leaving you!"

"Toby." Sarah turned to him, and something in the way her eyes flashed, the determined smile she wore, stopped Toby in his tracks. "This isn't your fight. Get your butt home."

The knight chose that moment to charge at the throne, still yelling incomprehensible battle cries. A deep roaring underscored the fox's shrill yips, growing louder by the second. Something small and hard hit Toby smartly on the forehead. He glanced up to see the ceiling shaking, shedding small stones like a dragon sloughing off dead scales. The floor, as if sensing a trend, began to quake as well, knocking Toby off his feet.

The Queen's lips pursed, her momentary smile disappearing into the wintry landscape of her face. "Enough," she said sharply, and waved a hand.

The air blurred. Toby felt a sudden sensation of speed, of things whizzing by him just out of the corners of his eyes. When his vision cleared, he was seated on a hill overlooking a vast labyrinth. A castle was just visible on the other side, looking tiny and impossibly far away. Around him, Sarah's friends were picking themselves up and taking stock of their surroundings, asking what had happened. And before them, at the foot of the hill, a pair of massive doors set in the high walls of the labyrinth were slowly swinging shut.

Toby jumped to his feet and bolted down the hill, ignoring both the shouts from behind him and the roots and rocks in his path. He reached the doors just as, formidably and irreversibly, they slammed shut.

* * *

The throne room stopped dancing as quickly as it had started, the rocks settling back into their uneasy sleep, probably wondering where their friend had gone. Sarah risked a look around. She and the Queen were now quite alone.

_This isn't your fight._

_I have to face him alone._

Unbidden and unwanted, Sarah's heart accelerated, hammering against her ribs as if eager to get out. Whatever happened now, she knew she was ready for it. Unfortunately, it seemed that her body didn't, and had decided to panic without her.

The Queen looked as though she were thawing. Her proud, rigid bearing had relaxed into more natural poise, colour returned to her pale cheeks as if it were bleeding from her unnaturally red lips. Even her eyes looked less flinty and more liquid. _She's trying to show me what I want to see,_ Sarah realised. _Or what she thinks I want to see. The mother I never had, rather than just the heroine of a million bedtime stories._ Even as she thought it, though, part of her resolve melted too. _I can't fall for it,_ she scolded herself. _There's got to be a way out of this. I just have to keep my wits about me._

"I've missed you so much, Sarah," Linda Williams said, and those might have been real tears in her eyes. "You can't imagine how happy I am to have you back.'

'Maybe I can," Sarah answered, hearing with embarrassment her own voice crack on the last word. "Why did you go to all this trouble? Why not just come home?"

The look her mother gave her was pure Queen, and most disconcerting to see on that familiar face, a face Sarah had seen every day for fifteen years, though always in newspaper clippings and always in black and white. "But don't you understand? I thought you did. I thought you felt the same way. There's no room for me there anymore." She caught Sarah's hands in her own, and Sarah didn't pull away. "We've both been replaced. Forget all of them. We can make ourselves a new story."

There was a hunger behind the hope on Linda's face, something that made her pretty words much less appealing. And Sarah thought of bedtime stories, and a scrapbook of newspaper clippings, and the look on her father's face some days, and thought, _You've always had that selfish streak. But nothing ever happened to you to check it. You don't think about other people's feelings. You're sort of...a child that's got older._

_But I'm different._

Sarah stepped back, that thought ringing in her head. _I'm different. And because I know I am, I'm going to win._ The time would come. And those pesky words were just waiting to be said.

A sadness both profound and theatrical crept into Linda's eyes. When she spoke, that same sadness was barely cloaked in her voice. "I see." She glanced briefly away from her daughter's face. "I hope I can change your mind, convince you that you can trust me. In the meantime, however, you may have the run of the castle. You're free to explore, but I'll show you to your room, if you like."

"My...room?"

* * *

It turned out to be at the other end of a long hallway. The door was thick and blackened with age, held together with iron rivets. _So much iron in a fairy castle,_ Sarah wondered, and then remembered that in all the time she'd been here, she'd never seen the Goblin King without gloves on.

When she pushed the door open, she expected medieval furnishings to match the door. But what she saw was beyond anything she could have expected.

It was a perfect recreation of her bedroom, as it had been while she'd still lived in her parent's house. Of course, the actual room hadn't looked like this since Sarah had left home – it had long since been converted into a faceless guest room. But this was like taking a step back in time. Her vanity sat in the corner, strewn with the detritus of a teenage would-be beauty queen. Her bookcase full of fairy tales still stood against the wall, the dwarf bookend that reminded her so strongly of Hoggle standing guard over _Snow White_. Here, her posters still hung on the walls, advertising CATS, La Cage aux Folles, a few other plays that her mother had apparently acted in, and, of course, the M.C. Escher print that Sarah knew she'd given to Toby when she left home.

Her old bed was there, roses trailing from the gaudy pink canopy, and beside it the display case that held her old soft toys (one or two of which still lived in her real bedroom, sitting permanently at the foot of her bed). One space stood empty, waiting for a valiant knight of the Round Table to grace it again with his red-ribboned presence.

It was horrible.

Sarah stood frozen in the doorway, every sense including common sense screaming that it was a trap. _How long has she been planning this?_ She plastered a fearless smile across her face and, overpowering her cowardly feet, shuffled round, ready to politely decline from ever setting foot in this chamber, but instead found herself face to face with the first knight ever to defend her from imaginary dragons. "Lancelot?"

Her mother smiled beatifically and pressed the teddy bear into Sarah's arms. "What do you think?"

Sarah glanced back over her shoulder at the physical déjà vu behind her. "It's...interesting." This did not seem to be enough. "I think I've grown up some since I decorated this." Urgh. All the stuffed animals were staring at Sarah accusingly, button eyes glinting maniacally.

Linda merely shrugged. "You may change it if you like. I only wanted to make an impression."

Sarah took a few tentative steps into the room. No cages dropped from the ceiling, the door didn't shut and lock behind her, but she knew from experience that a trap didn't have to have bars and locks to be inescapable. This was uncannily like her encounter in the junkyard during her first journey through the Labyrinth. Almost unconsciously, her hands tightened around Lancelot's reassuring bulk. She let herself walk further in, noticing the tiny details that made this magical creation perfect. The floral-patterned wallpaper, the black mark on said wallpaper where she'd flung _The Last Battle_ against the wall in a fit of pique after the Talking Bear had died (although she'd immediately retrieved the book and finished reading it, bawling the whole time), the smudge on the vanity surface where she'd spilled scarlet nail polish and hadn't quite wiped it off in time, the blue china figure that had sat on her vanity ever since she'd seen it at a garage sale and decided that it had more personality than your average china figurine.

Sarah traced its jawline with one finger. Funny, really, how much that silly thing reminded her of the Goblin King. Of course, now, she wasn't sure if that was really what he'd looked like, or if that was just the impression she'd got from him. Of course, it didn't really matter – the statuette was irreversibly named Jareth in Sarah's mind.

Behind her, the door shut with a soft click. From this side, it looked white and trim, with a proper handle that turned easily when Sarah tried it. She wasn't locked in after all, and the door still opened onto the goblin castle. No trap – yet. Sarah shut the door again, a little worried that it was creeping up on her and she wouldn't notice until it was too late. She returned to the vanity, where she cleared away a space to rest her elbows on while she looked into the mirror.

The face reflected there was different from the one she'd seen there the last time she'd looked into this particular mirror, before it had been taken to the Goodwill. That face had been young, selfish, arrogant and self-assured, secure in the knowledge that she was in the right, that she knew everything, that if something didn't go her way then it wasn't fair.

This face, though, was older, hopefully wiser, slightly more lined with age and experience, less selfish, and secure in the knowledge that life wasn't fair but she could deal with it. This face was not the face of someone who would surrender just because someone offered to make her dreams come true.

Sarah looked away from the mirror, her gaze finding the music box she prized so highly. She winced as she remembered how easily she'd been tricked into nearly dancing away her time in the Labyrinth and Toby's freedom. Well, it wasn't going to happen again. Something told her that throwing the music box into the mirror wouldn't get her out this time. But there was something in this room that might.

Sarah tugged open the right-hand drawer, fishing around until she saw the familiar red leather cover of her favourite book. She wrapped her fingers around it and lifted it out of the drawer, scooping up Lancelot and crossing the room to flop down on the bed. She opened the book and flipped through it, words she'd memorized years ago coming back to her with the turning of each page, until she found the lines she'd never been able to forget.

Her lips moved soundlessly as she read them again. _For my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom is as great..._

She shut the book forcefully and flung herself face-down on the bed. The pillow smelled of freshly-laundered linen, and Sarah inhaled deeply before rolling over to stare at the ceiling.

She'd planned to think over her situation, to make a plan of action, to think of what to do next. She'd been prepared to have a good, long, self-pitying cry. Instead, the long night caught up with her and she fell asleep.


	15. Chapter 15

Toby's hands pounded against the heavy doors. When this produced no effect, he began to shout as well. He kept it up until his throat was hoarse and his hands were sore, but still, nothing happened. An inquisitive fairy landed on his head and yanked sharply on his hair, flying away with a few reddish strands and a wickedly triumphant expression. Toby wondered when it would realise it hadn't got all of him.

Frustrated, he turned his back on the uncooperative doors and leaned against them. This was almost worse, because now he could see Sarah's friends watching him.

"Well?" he asked angrily. "What do you want me to do?"

"Give it up?" Hoggle suggested. "Them doors don't want to open, and even I can't persuade them to open when they don't want to."

Toby let out a long sigh, blowing a lock of hair from his eyes. He thumped his fist against the door, achieving nothing but hurting his hand.

"Well, then," the fox-knight said nervously, "now that we have a few moments..." He executed a dramatic, sweeping bow. "My name is Sir Didymus. These are my comrades, Hoggle and Ludo. And you must be Toby." The fox eyed him up and down. "I must say, when Sarah said she had to rescue her baby brother I somehow imagined you as being smaller."

"I've grown since then." Toby smacked the door again. "That's the problem!"

'I'm, er, not quite sure I follow," Sir Didymus admitted.

"Sarah saved me back then. She beat this rotten maze, she saved me from this Goblin King. So I should at least be able to return the favour. But I'm stuck here, and I'm useless!" Toby punctuated his sentence with a thump on the door. "It's just not fair!"

The large shaggy...whateveritwas, Toby was sure his imagination didn't stretch far enough to put a name on it, lumbered up to Toby. "Help Sawah?" he inquired.

"Yeah, I want to help Sarah. But I can't get in!"

Ludo nudged Toby gently aside, and pushed against the doors. They resisted for a moment, but then gave in with a loud, protesting creak.

Toby looked up at Ludo, and said, "Hey, thanks." He looked over at the other two. "I'm going back. My mom's got no clue how to survive in a fantasy world. She might be in serious trouble. And Sarah..."

"Oh, that's a bad idea," Hoggle said grimly, folding his arms and shaking his head defeatedly. "You're out now. Better just to go home, forget the whole thing."

"What? But you're Sarah's best friend!" Toby exclaimed, aghast.

Hoggle scoffed. "Was Sarah's best friend. But she don't need me no more. Oh no, Sarah can handle it. Sarah can take care of herself." He laughed. "And that Queen is mad. At least Jareth gave you a chance. This one'd slit your throat soon as look at you. No, you can risk your neck on dangers untold and hardships unnumbered for Sarah if you want to, but Hoggle is going to look after Hoggle."

Sir Didymus looked taken aback. "Sir Hoggle, have you lost your senses?"

"No, I ain't. I've come to them. There ain't no point in helping Sarah, if all I end up doing's making things worse!"

Looking around, Toby saw that from somewhere in the background, thousands of little ugly goblins had snuck out of hiding and were watching with some interest. Icy fear dripped through him, and he had to fight it down. There was no point in being scared of this audience, not when there was something more important to be discussed. He'd just pretend they weren't there.

"Look, you didn't make anything worse," he began.

"Oh, really."

"No, you didn't. If I know Sarah, she would've gone for the deal whether you and I were still captive or not. She likes anything that makes a good story."

Toby could barely hear the little dwarf's next words. "But she forgot us. She forgot me."

Toby paused. "No, she didn't," he finally said. "I remember when I was little, she tried to get me to play with her, listen to her stories, even though she was like a hundred years old and a girl. I wasn't interested. But she tried to tell me. She still remembered you, and even after she moved out of the house and into that little shack she likes so much, she would still sometimes say something silly like, 'Don't touch that mirror, I'm expecting an important call'. And I know what she's like. Even if she didn't have time to get in touch, even if she started to let you guys fall behind a bit, Sarah never forgets a friend. And right now, she might need you more than she's ever needed you before."

To Toby's utter amazement, Hoggle looked like he might be softening. Sir Didymus was nodding thoughtfully, and so, Toby realised, were a lot of the assorted goblins watching. His audience had grown, he saw with nervous pride. And they appeared at least slightly impressed.

"But what can we do?" Sir Didymus asked quietly. "She did choose to stay."

"Yeah, and she's next in line for the throne, if ya didn't notice!" Hoggle grumped.

It hit Toby in a blinding flash of inspiration. "Wait, wait. Next in line, right? No problem! We just have to find the real Goblin King, and then Sarah's off the hook!"

From somewhere in the cautious audience of goblins, Toby heard someone say, "Oh, do that. I'd like Jareth back."

"Why don't you help out?" Toby asked the crowd, which shrank back a bit, many mumbled excuses blending into one apologetic refusal. Toby shook his head. "Then stay out of the way."

"It's a risky plan, one that just might require us to lay down our lives," Sir Didymus commented, and Toby groaned. That kind of talk was not exactly helping his case. But he perked up when the knight said, "I'm all for it. Lead on, valiant Sir Toby!"

"Follow," Ludo agreed.

Hoggle sighed, overdramatically, in Toby's opinion. "Well, if you're all going to be stupid and go back, I might as well come with to pick up the bodies."

The general mood of the crowd became more uncertain. Toby caught a few "Well, should we?"s from somewhere within it, though they were quickly shushed.

He couldn't quite believe it. He'd spoken up, and the crowd hadn't jeered, hadn't thrown anything, hadn't laughed. Instead, many of the goblins seemed to be nodding in assent. He caught a few murmurs amongst the crowd.

"I much preferred the old King."

"D'you think the skinny human would be good to eat?"

"Is he talking to us?"

"Who's Sarah?"

"She's my sister," Toby shouted, startling both himself and the goblins gathered to watch the entertainment. "She's being held captive in the castle by the Queen, the woman who stole the Goblin King's throne out from under him and -" here he took a wild guess – "threw the lot of you out of the Labyrinth. She doesn't deserve to rule. She doesn't even like the kingdom."

A few more nods this time, and many emphatic agreements.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Toby encouraged the curious horde. "Let's go storm the castle, reclaim the kingdom, and save the princess!"

"Oh, this Sarah's a princess?"

"We have a princess?"

"It's news to me."

"Apparently she needs saving."

"I don't think we save princesses. We're more in the habit of stealing them."

"You could steal her from the castle," Toby suggested.

"Well, why not? I haven't got anything better to do."

"Yeah. The Queen's useless, too. Imagine, turning the goblins out of the goblin city!"

"She needs taking down a peg.""At least Jareth put up with us."

"He wasn't so bad, if you kept him where you could see him."

"And usually he didn't really drop people in the bog."

"And he could sing!" A chorus of agreement rose from the crowd – apparently this was important for goblin royalty.

"He's our king, and this upstart had no right to kick him off the throne."

"Yeah. What power do the Lords and Ladies have here, anyway?"

"Why do they care about what happens in the Labyrinth?"

"We've put up with this for too long!"

Toby almost laughed. There was nothing to it! Speaking in public was easy, when no one actually tried to eat you. The general mood of the crowd had swung in his favour, and now he had an army at his disposal. And all he'd had to do was say a few lines.

"What are we waiting for?" he repeated.

"Good question. What are we waiting for?"

"I don't know!"

"Our king would never have stood for this!"

"Yeah! Let's go steal the princess! Show that Queen who's really in charge!"

With a collection of assorted cries, the entire impromptu revolution swept up and into the Labyrinth, carrying Toby and the other rescuers with it.

* * *

Sarah woke up feeling sharp and rested, and, more importantly, prepared for whatever might come next. An idea had come to her in the night, one she hadn't been able to see before, clouded as it had been with a swirl of conflicting emotions.

" _I did not come here for that arrogant, self-centred, priggish, constantly-costume-changing JERK!"_ she'd said. But she'd been wrong. Much as she'd like to leave him locked in limbo forever, and never have to think about or be confused by him again, it seemed that the Goblin King was the key to this whole mess. If she could find him, save him from whatever prison he languished in, she could save herself. And, of course, that would abolish her guilt for being the reason he was there in the first place.

Sarah told herself sternly that those were the only two reasons she wanted to find him. Those, and nothing more.

A picture of Alex swam across her mind. Since arriving in the Labyrinth, Sarah realised, she had barely given him a thought. Not one "Oh, I wish my big, strong husband-to-be were here to save me!" but also not one "Oh, I wish I was back home safe with the man I love." She wondered what it meant, not just for their relationship, but also for her chances of escaping the Underground a second time.

Sitting up, Sarah shoved these troubles to the back of her mind. There'd be plenty of time for Alex later, and she wasn't going to give up. Surrendering to her childish dreams would be like eating cotton candy for the rest of her life. Sooner or later, it'd make her sick.

With that conclusion, Sarah swung her legs over the edge of the bed and got up, crossing the room in a few strides. Her pyjamas were getting that grungy feel that pyjamas get after twenty-four hours of continuous wear, and she was beginning to wonder if the clothes that no doubt filled the dresser were made to fit her fifteen-year-old self or her thirty-year-old self.

 _Fifteen_ , Sarah decided, as she attempted to wriggle into a pair of jeans and gave up on the third attempt. Sometime in the past fifteen years, she'd grown a butt. "I don't even want to think about how that princess dress would fit me now," she griped. Sighing, she slipped back into her pyjama pants, and tied her threadbare robe back around her waist, noticing not for the first time how badly faded its pink colour really was.

Unceremoniously, she sat down, cross-legged, on the chair before the vanity and began to brush her hair. She'd really let it get long this time; why hadn't she cut it?

Sarah shook her head when she realised she was stalling. She was putting off thinking about him, having to come face-to-face with him for the first time in fifteen years, about maybe not having the courage or conviction to say the words this time. Him. _Jareth._

Sarah smacked the brush down on the vanity, mentally scolding herself for being so cowardly. He was only a man, for all his tricks and illusions. She was going to have to face him eventually, but she would come out the victor. And all this displacement activity was only delaying the inevitable.

_Where would I hide a Goblin King if I had an entire castle to hide him in?_

The answer seemed so obvious that Sarah had to wonder if it was the right one at all. _Castles have dungeons, right? And towers. And pillories and so on. Of course, as far as I know, the dungeons in this place hardly ever get used, since there's a handy Bog of Eternal Stench right around the corner._ She smiled and picked up the brush again. _Which means the dungeons are a perfect place to start looking._

A knock on the door broke through Sarah's thoughts. "Come in," she called, not bothering to get up.

The door swung open and the Queen breezed in, followed by a goblin in a skirt, carrying a large covered tray. "Set it on the desk," the Queen instructed her, "and then leave us." Sarah watched in the mirror, humming absently as she negotiated the brush around a knot. The goblin set the tray down, removed the cover to reveal an oversized breakfast that two people couldn't have eaten in one sitting, and slipped silently out of the door, shutting it behind her. A delicious smell of hot sausages wafted from the tray, and Sarah had fight down her stomach's complaints that it had been a long time since dinner. She didn't know what would happen if she ate anything, but based on both fairy tales and personal experience, it would probably be a bad idea.

The queen drifted over to the vanity. 'I trust you slept well?"

Sarah nodded and continued to brush her hair. She stopped humming, though, when she realised that what she was humming was the music box song.

"You must be starved. I've brought you breakfast."

"Actually, I'm all right." The Queen reached out and took the brush from her. "Here, let me." As she pulled the brush through Sarah's dark hair, she asked, "How do you like your room?"

Sarah shrugged. "It's...nice," she finally answered. Then something that she'd nearly forgotten jumped out at her, and she inquired, "Where are the goblins?"

The Queen smiled, but her eyes looked surprised. "They were...untidy."

"What did you do to them?"

"Nothing awful. They've just been relocated outside the Labyrinth. It's much tidier now. I'm sure you'll like it here," she said soothingly. "And, in time, you may even learn to love it."

"Did you?" Sarah asked quietly.

The Queen paused, the brush held still. "I'm sorry?"

"Did you love it here?" Sarah asked again, feeling suddenly as if she were on the very highest peak of a roller coaster, about to plunge down into the valleys and loops, and powerless to prevent it.

"Of course, princess." The Queen resumed brushing Sarah's hair, so motherly a gesture that Sarah wanted to scream.

"Did you love it more than us?"

The Queen opened her mouth to spill more excuses, but Sarah wasn't going to give her a chance. "Did you really love this place more than your husband and daughter? Or did you just love yourself?"

"Sarah, I told you, there was no place -"

"No place!" Sarah nearly laughed. "You were obsessed with getting revenge for some imagined slight. Did you stop and think for a minute that we might all be happier if you just came home? You were so in love with the idea of yourself as a martyr that you gave up every chance you had for happiness just so you could feel properly hard-done-by because the world wasn't fair!" Sarah took a deep breath. It had been a long sentence. She could feel her pulse pounding in her throat, her heart beating like a battle drum. Everything she'd never wanted to have thought, everything she'd wanted to say, everything she'd taken out on her father and stepmother over the long years had come uncorked.

The Queen stood like an ice statue, brush in hand, eyes wide with shock. But she said nothing.

"Well?" Sarah shouted, startling even herself. The brush dropped from the Queen's hand and clattered against the floor. "Answer me! Why did you give up fifteen years you could have had with us? Why did you give up your life in the first place? There was still time! If you were talking to the Goblin King, there was still time! Why didn't you come back? Why didn't you say the words? Why did you give up?"

The queen looked as if she'd been slapped. "Why did you?" she whispered, sounding as if she'd been struck dumb by the force of her daughter's unexpected wrath.

Sarah had been prepared to tear into her mother again, but those three words stopped her dead. "What?"

"Why didn't you just say the words? Why didn't you just win?" The Queen was shaking now, like a frozen waterfall on the brink of spring thaw. "Aren't you every bit as selfish as you dare to call me? Don't deny it! You only came here because you wanted this to be all about you."

The words slid chillily into place in Sarah's thoughts. She was right. The Queen was right. Sarah's mother was right.

And suddenly, Sarah knew just what to say. "I may be selfish, but at least I didn't desert my family. I didn't destroy a kingdom. I haven't hurt anyone just to get my wishes. And I won't let anyone down this time. No matter what."

There was along moment of ringing silence before Sarah continued. "And besides, Toby and my friends are out of trouble now. That's not entirely selfish, is it?"

In answer, the Queen waved a hand. The surface of the mirror clouded over for a moment, then cleared, to reveal a bird's-eye view of the Labyrinth. The image zoomed in, revealing a large cloud of dust racing through its many pathways, before diving into that cloud to reveal that it was, in fact, being kicked up by an almost indescribably large number of goblins. And there, right at the front –

"Toby!"

The image clouded over, and then the mirror cleared again, to reflect Sarah's panicked face and the Queen's triumphant, tight-lipped smile. "Out of trouble? Far from it. It looks like your brother is stirring up trouble. I shall have to go and deal with it." She snapped her fingers. There was a poof of sparkly dust that made Sarah cough, and when she looked again, the Queen was gone.

Time was now of the essence. If Sarah couldn't find Jareth before her mother did something horrible to Toby...well, it didn't bear thinking about. It took her a moment to uncross her legs and jump off the chair, but as soon as she did, she ran to the door, flinging it open and racing off down the hall.

Or, at least, that's what she tried to do. But the door was locked.

* * *

"Damn!" Irene swore as her third and final hairpin bent in the lock. "Well, now we know I'd make a terrible criminal."

She picked up the rusty padlock, trying not to meet the owl's unblinking (and slightly unnerving) gaze, and tugged on the lock in a vain attempt to weaken the bolt. Rust-eaten though it was, however, the bolt held. Irene dashed the lock against the rock in frustration, and was rewarded by a screech.

She glanced up at the owl, but it didn't seem to have made a sound. She picked up the padlock again, and noticed a small, almost insignificant, but definite bend in the bolt.

"Aha," she said smugly, and carefully selected a heavy, medium-sized rock.

* * *

Toby's feet weren't actually touching the ground. He doubted he could run as fast as this if they were. Instead, he was being carried on the shoulders of two largish goblins as the whole mob sped through the Labyrinth.

It was exhilarating, speeding around corners, down long corridors, through spirals, at the head of the pack, without once slowing down. Even with his decidedly noble intentions in mind, Toby couldn't help letting out a loud whoop.

It died in his throat, however, when his bearers slid to an abrupt stop, causing an enormous goblin pile-up. The reason for this became obvious as Toby slipped off his carriers' shoulders and stood to face whatever it was in his way.

The Queen stepped forward, eyes flashing dangerously. The sound of her footsteps echoed menacingly over the din of confusion from the goblins, causing them to, one by one, stop talking and moving about and instead stand still, shuffling their feet, like a pack of schoolchildren caught by their teacher with their hands in her desk. Toby glanced over at Hoggle, Sir Didymus, and Ludo for support, but the sound of the Queen clearing her throat meaningfully drew his attention back to her.

"What is going on here?" Each syllable rang loud in the sudden silence. The goblins began to shuffle and mutter, and Toby caught one clear "He started it," aimed in his direction.

The Queen fixed Toby with a withering glare. Then her attentions returned to the would-be revolution before her. "You were banished from the Labyrinth," she said coldly. "Need I remind you of the punishment for returning?"

The murmurs took on a more frightened tone.

The queen nodded, just once. "You have five minutes to get beyond the Labyrinth walls, or face the consequences. Go."

The goblins disappeared, as if into thin air. Toby swallowed. The Queen's cold eyes fixed on him, and he offered up a silent prayer that he'd get out of this one alive.

The Queen said nothing, just sniffed disdainfully and snapped her fingers.

And then there was darkness.

* * *

The rock came down on the lock with shattering force. The lock, now battered quite out of shape, shuddered but held. Irene blew a stray lock of hair from her eyes, and raised the rock for a ninth blow.

As stone hit rusted iron, three things happened at once. The padlock squealed protestingly, then gave up the ghost, falling in two neat halves. The owl fluttered up off the rock it had been chained to, shedding a maelstrom of feathers, and a very male voice sighed, "Finally!"

And suddenly the cavern was full of people.


	16. Chapter 16

It took Toby's eyes several seconds to adjust to the sudden darkness. At first, the air was filled with assorted shouts, curses, and exclamations, until eyes came to terms with the lack of light. Then, the dim space, which appeared to be a cave, was colonized by outbursts of recognition, sighs of relief, and shouts of outrage.

"Toby?"

Toby turned, to see one face he hadn't been expecting, but was nonetheless immeasurably glad to see. "Mom?"

Irene ran forward and flung her arms around her son. "I was so worried!"

"Mom, it's okay. I'm okay. Are you -"

"I'm fine. Oh, Toby! Why did that witch send you here, too?"

"It wasn't me she wanted." Toby looked around. In the dim light, he could make out the now-familiar shapes of Hoggle, Ludo, and Sir Didymus, along with the latter's trusty steed. But there was another person present, someone who Toby could swear he'd never seen before, but who, like the whole of this damn maze, seemed oddly familiar. The man looked more human than the goblins, though equally strange. His wild blond hair resembled nothing more than a dandelion gone to seed, two mismatched eyes flashed angrily under upswept eyebrows, and, of course, he was dressed like a cross between one of Sarah's medieval costumes and a glam rocker.

Almost as soon as Toby laid eyes on him, the man turned to look in his direction. As soon as he laid eyes on Toby, he laughed. The laugh was surprised, and humourless, and Toby noticed that the man's teeth were oddly sharp.

"What?" Toby asked, trying to place the face. He knew he'd seen it somewhere before.

"You remind me of the babe." The man's voice was deep and satin-smooth, and Toby had the irrational thought that he'd heard it singing. The man looked Toby up and down, the smirk fading from his face to be replaced by a look of disdain. "You are the babe." He glanced over at Hoggle. "She chose that boy to take my throne? It's about time I was free."

"Whoa, hold on," Toby demanded. "Who are you, anyway?"

The man turned back to Toby, shedding a few feathers in his wake. That sharp-toothed smile was back in place, plastered across his face. 'You've really forgotten me," he said mock-sadly, shaking his head.

"You're him, aren't you?" Toby asked, a suspicion seizing him. "You're the Goblin King."

"I was." The smirk slithered away, to be replaced by a very serious frown. "And soon, I will be again."

* * *

So long!

It had been so long that he, Jareth, the great and terrible Goblin King, had been imprisoned in this accursed oubliette. So long that he had been trapped, held in his least powerful form by the touch of cold iron. So long that he had waited for someone, anyone, to rescue him.

Fine. Not 'anyone'. The girl.

Sarah.

She was the only one who would have bothered to come for him, he knew. His goblins would be cowed into submission by any ruler who showed them a firm hand, the Lords and Ladies had been considering throwing him out anyway, and Linda, blasted Linda, would be only too glad to leave him to rot. Sarah was the only one who might have cared. She was a romantic at heart, unable to leave a thread of a story hanging. She would always have to pull it, even if it meant that the whole thing would unravel. She was the only one who might have taken pity on him in his plight, who might have felt differently now that he was no longer demanding power over her, but only begging for power over himself...

Which, apparently, he still didn't have, since even now, fifteen long years later, he was still thinking about her.

She hadn't come. It didn't matter. He was free, thanks to this rather frumpy redheaded woman, and there was a kingdom to be reclaimed.

"So you're the Goblin King." The woman was sizing him up as if she'd expected someone more impressive. Which was, frankly, silly. Jareth didn't know how anyone could be more impressive than he without the aid of music and strategic lighting. Come to think of it, that was a rather good idea. Unfortunately, the goblins he'd put in charge of his personal spotlight were gone, banished beyond the walls of the Labyrinth, and his power to control his soundtrack was gone, along with the rest of his powers. Jareth took a moment to curse Linda again, and curse his own foolishness for ever responding to her impassioned wish. "I must say, when Sarah told me about you, I thought you'd be taller."

"Sarah?" Jareth felt his traitor heart leap in his chest, and fought it down. _She isn't here. You don't need her._

'Toby, where is she?" the woman asked the boy.

"Mom, she stayed behind! It wasn't me the Queen wanted, it was Sarah all along. She stayed behind, and now she's the heir to the throne. She's trapped in the castle with that witch." The boy sat heavily on one of the rocks jutting from the wall, a shocked expression writ across his face. "And it's all my fault."

"Sarah is here?" The redheaded woman turned an irritated glare on Jareth, who returned it with equal force. "Is this true?" he questioned the dwarf with the ridiculous name. Hogfeathers, Dogwart...something like that. But rather than answer, the dwarf folded his arms across his chest and glowered.

"I ain't tellin' you nothin'. You ain't gonna mess around with that girl no more, and you ain't gonna use me to do it!"

Exasperated, Jareth turned to the other two people also stuck in the oubliette – who, he noticed, had also come to Sarah's aid when she'd had to beat his Labyrinth to save her brother. "Is she here?"

The shaggy giant nodded enthusiastically. "Sawah back!"

Damn his traitorous heart. She'd said it best, hadn't she? _"But what no one knew was that the Goblin King had fallen in love with the girl..."_

He still remembered those silly lines. They'd ingrained themselves into his memory. _"And he had granted her certain powers..."_ The power to reduce him to a teenage boy in love for the first time, it seemed. The power to make his heart jump into his throat with a single glance. And the power to set him free – as the mere thought of her had done now.

_She came back._

It was time. He'd been moping over her for nearly fifteen years. It was time to stop missing her, time to stop letting Linda walk all over him, time to get out of this damn oubliette.

"You. Hogsbreath." The dwarf turned, saw his monarch's pointing finger and inch from his nose, and sniffed.

"It's Hoggle."

"Whatever. You got her out of this oubliette, didn't you?"

"Well..." The dwarf seemed to be considering this. "She had to pay."

"But you did show her the way out. Against my express wishes, I recall," Jareth commented. The dwarf looked slightly sheepish.

"I was takin' her back to the start of the Labyrinth!" he protested.

Jareth frowned. "Ah, yes, you did tell me. And then, as now, I didn't believe you." The dwarf swallowed nervously. "But all is forgiven – or will be, if you lead us out of this oubliette. Right now."

* * *

Only a few minutes had passed, and Jareth was already losing his patience.

"There was a door around here somewhere!" the dwarf – damn, Jareth had had his name a moment ago – shouted.

"Well, where is it now?" Toby asked anxiously. "We've got to get out of here!"

The dwarf raised his arms and dropped them again helplessly. "I don't know! Why don't you find it?"

"Enough of this," Jareth muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose with one gloved hand. Sarah was somewhere out there, probably wrecking his beloved Labyrinth, and he was stuck in an oubliette because some woman he'd been fool enough to make a deal with had stolen his powers. And he was staying here because some idiotic dwarf couldn't find the stupid door? He didn't think so. "Move."

* * *

Sarah pounded against the door, letting out one frustrated scream. "Come on!" But no matter how hard she wrenched at the doorknob, it refused to turn.

Turning on her heel, Sarah rushed over to the window and looked out. She was met with a dizzying drop – apparently, her room was located in a tower. Once upon a time, she'd have thought it romantic, even fitting. She still did, but it was one hell of an obstacle in the way of escape. 'They used to lock princesses in towers for a reason," Sarah grumbled. Nevertheless, she tried the window, just in case. It was locked just as securely as the door, and, when she beat on it, the glass refused to break. _Just my luck. I had to get the only glassed-in windows in the whole goblin castle._

Looking around the room, she tried to decide which object would be most use against a stubbornly locked door.

* * *

The rocks shuddered, then, with a moan like an animal in pain, a fissure opened in the wall. A large cloud of dust was kicked up, sparkling where it caught the light. When it settled, a stone archway stood where there had been only blank wall, leading out into a dim, rough-hewn passage. It went on for about a metre before splitting into two, leading off in two different directions.

Jareth allowed himself a moment of pride. He'd still got it. People and goblins might be notoriously fickle, but at least his Labyrinth still did what it was told.

Not bothering to wait for the rest of the crowd, Jareth strode into the passage. He hesitated only momentarily at the place where it forked, choosing the left path and continuing on. The path to the right might be easier, but this one would take him to the centre much more quickly. And Jareth was tired of waiting.

* * *

The doorknob turned just as Sarah raised the music box to try to break the lock. She hid it guiltily behind her back as the door swung open and her mother stepped into the room.

"I hope you've had time to calm down and think about your behaviour. I know you couldn't have meant some of those things you said, and I wanted to give you a chance to rethink them." The Queen smiled stiffly as she slipped around Sarah and into the room proper.

"Sure," Sarah answered quickly, a little too quickly. The Queen frowned.

"Have you really? Or are you still sulking?"

"No, no I'm not." Sarah tried to think. It was a little difficult. She felt like a small girl getting a talking-to, and it wasn't a soothing feeling.

She swallowed the sharp retort on the tip of her tongue. If she got mad here and now, she'd never get out of this prison. But if she played her cards right... "Sorry I lost my temper."

The Queen glanced suspiciously at her daughter. "I accept your apology," she said, finally. "If you're ready to behave, you may come downstairs and -" She broke off, and a puzzled expression crossed her face.

"Are you all right?"

The Queen's mouth opened, as if she were about to say something, but no words came out. Her eyes widened, as if she were seeing something awful. Her body shook like a leaf in the wind, and she clutched at Sarah's shoulder for support. For one horrible moment her whole appearance flickered, like a bad hologram effect in an old sci-fi movie. Sarah caught a glimpse of a woman in a plain blouse and navy skirt, the crow's feet to either side of her eyes and the frown lines etched along her mouth betraying long years of bitterness. Then, without any warning, the illusion of perfection returned, shielding Linda Williams from the world. Her back stiffened as she straightened up, lips disappearing into one thin, hard line.

"What happened?" Sarah asked, curious despite herself. "What's going on?"

"He didn't – couldn't – there's no way -" The Queen was trembling with rage now, and her grip on Sarah's shoulder was probably going to leave a bruise.

'Who?"

The Queen took a deep breath, composing herself. "Well, he won't get away with it," she declared to the room at large. "I won't let him. If he wants his kingdom back, he'd better be ready to fight." And with that, she turned and stalked out of the room, apparently oblivious to Sarah's presence.

Sarah hurried after her, heart leaping like a salmon headed upstream. There was only one person she could think of who would inspire such venom in the Queen, only one person who would want his kingdom back. And that wasn't Toby.

This was her chance.

The Goblin King was back.


	17. Chapter 17

The throne room was in chaos. Goblins were everywhere, shouting, laughing, and Sarah saw one doing what she could swear was a jig. The Queen stormed in, took one look at the festivities, and screamed.

It didn't sound like it should have been able to come from a human throat. The entire throne room froze instantly, apparently in terror. The scream cut off, leaving an awful frozen silence that hurt the ears.

"What is going on here?" the Queen asked in the icicle-dripping tones mothers reserve for small children standing clutching a baseball amid the shards of their best china.

The assembled goblins shivered, almost in unison.

"Did I say you could throw a party?" The goblins nearest her shrank back a little. "Well?"

"No, ma'am," a bulky horned goblin in heavy armour answered contritely.

"That's right. Now, clean this mess up and get back to whatever it was you were doing before this outrage occurred. I want to see this room spotless. We'll be having a guest shortly, and I want to make him feel as -" she scowled – "unwelcome as possible. Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal," the goblin woman who'd brought Sarah her breakfast muttered, with a dark look at the Queen. The Queen didn't appear to notice, instead nodding once.

"Good. Get to work."

* * *

The Goblin King was lost.

How many twists and turns could this damn maze have? It had never bothered him before. But then again, he'd never been the one trying to find the centre. He'd always been able to pop up wherever he wanted to go. But since he'd sacrificed a generous portion of his powers in a fog of self-pity, his teleportation or whatever silly word mortals were calling it by now wasn't quite working as well as he'd hoped. Watching the trials and travails of the people lost in the Labyrinth's bends and dead-ends was amusing when one of those people wasn't you.

Or perhaps it was the Labyrinth's fault. The stupid maze was very clever at presenting a challenge to the hapless fools – the 'heroes'- who found themselves trying to navigate it. Perhaps too clever, especially considering that its master now found himself in the reluctant role of hero.

It didn't help that a good thousand goblins had come crawling out of the woodwork as soon as news had spread that their King was back, and a large number of them had decided to follow him on the off-chance he was doing something interesting. This made it incredibly difficult to stop and think without causing a pile-up and creating mass confusion. At least they weren't underground any longer. They'd been stopped for nearly a whole minute, and, despite that, there were still goblins moving on the edges that hadn't got the memo.

"This is ridiculous," Jareth muttered under his breath as the large, furry troll-goblin-creature ran into him from behind, pushed by the mob. The Labyrinth still belonged to him, didn't it? It still listened to him, didn't it? Then how could it possibly get in his way?

"'Ey, you!"

The voice was small and heavily accented, and seemed to come from somewhere around Jareth's knee. He glanced down, but saw no one.

"You're on my front porch!"

There it was – a large, blue worm sitting half-in, half-out of a crack between the stones of the wall. As Jareth watched, it cocked its head to one side, and glared.

"Your front porch?" Jareth fixed the worm with a glare of his own. "Don't you know who I am?"

"No," the worm answered nonchalantly.

"I'm the Goblin King. And this whole Labyrinth, and all of its inhabitants, are under my control." He left out the tiny, unimportant fact that he didn't, in fact, control them as of this very instant.

"Oh, that's nice," the worm said obliviously. "Would you ask your goblins to get off my porch?"

"This is ridiculous," Jareth repeated.

"Excuse me?" It was the woman – Sarah's stepmother. "Excuse me. We're lost. We're trying to get to the goblin castle. Could you point us in the right direction?"

The worm made a face. "Why would you want to go there? Narsty place."

The woman planted her hands firmly on her hips. "We'll get off your porch if you'll tell us where to go."

The worm shook its head. "It's your funeral." It nodded towards the wall on the other side of the passage. "See that door?"

"Yes," both the woman and the boy – Tommy, Toby, Todd, something like that - answered promptly. Jareth was a little surprised – he thought he'd concealed that particular door well enough to fool anyone who wasn't actually walking through it.

"Take that door, turn left, and keep going straight. It'll take you right to the Goblin Castle. You can't miss it." The worm shivered. "Good luck."

* * *

"Bar the doors."

The assembled goblins looked up at the Queen apprehensively. "Bar the doors?" one, braver than the rest, queried.

"Yes."

"But, milady, if Jareth is on his way here, doors aren't going to stop -" The goblin's sentence cut off abruptly as the Queen's eyes found him.

"I said to bar the doors, and you will bar the doors. Is that clear?"

The goblin, sensing imminent defeat, sighed. "Yes, milady."

"And I don't want to hear that name mentioned in my presence ever again. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, milady." The goblin was shivering now.

"Good." One long, white finger was stretched out, and the Queen tapped the goblin lightly on the nose. "Don't let it happen again."

The goblin nodded, then froze in horror as an icicle sprouted from the end of his nose. Within seconds, he appeared to be covered in frost.

The Queen smiled benevolently. "Does anyone else think that man is more powerful than I am? Anyone else think I can't defeat him again?"

One rather squat goblin was stupid enough to raise his hand. The Queen pointed, and he was flash-frozen.

"Any more dissenters?"

Sarah, watching from the window, turned her face away from the sorry picture before her. _She's totally insane,_ she thought, and tightened her grip on the stone ledge. A few chinks of mortar fell away towards the empty city. _But what do I do?_

And that was when she noticed a plume of dust over the Labyrinth walls, drawing nearer every second.

Sarah spun around, seizing the opportunity to distract her mother. "Something's coming."

The Queen's smile dissolved. Turning back to the assembled goblins, she hissed, "Bar the doors."

* * *

A single ball of black fluff rolled across the street without a sound, carrying a tiny plume of dust in its wake. It scurried over the toe of a black leather boot, and disappeared into an alleyway.

Jareth eyed it contemptuously. "Pathetic. Where, oh where, is my welcoming committee?"

A large, horned goblin raised a hand ponderously, and Jareth found he had to roll his eyes. "Not you. The army. If I were running this show, I would have locked the gates the moment I heard of our approach, and set the army on us the moment we got through them."

"That Queen didn't seem to be on very good terms with the goblins," the woman commented. "No guards on the gates or on the castle...I think the army may have mutinied."

"Armies don't mutiny, Mom," the boy whispered, facing away from his mother in an attempt not to be heard. It seemed to work.

"Hmm." The once and future Goblin King granted his capital city a dispassionate glare. "It looks as though this is going to be easier than I thought."

* * *

_What can I do?_

Well, for one thing, Sarah could un-bar the doors. Of course, that was easier said than done. The sheer size of the bar across the tall, imposing oaken doors was daunting enough. Then there were the lengths of heavy chain wrapped around it, securing it to said doors. And, on top of that, the badly-spelled sign saying, "DOE NOTTE TUCH". The goblins must really have been scared, Sarah reflected, as she scrutinised the obstacle in her path. Nothing was getting through those doors short of a battering ram.

Right on cue, since even inanimate objects have to follow the laws of narrative causality, the doors exploded.

Sarah ducked, shielding her head with her arms in an attempt to protect herself from the shrapnel. Links of chain and shards of wood flew past her, a few delivering blows to her head and arms. By the feel of things, she'd have to get a new housecoat. Not that she didn't need a new one anyway, but now she needed one without gaping tears in it.

A cloud of dust rolled over her, and Sarah choked back a cough. When she finally managed to straighten up and open her eyes, a boulder as tall as she was and nearly as wide as it was tall stood in the doorway where a large chunk of the doors had once been. "Ludo?" Sarah called, at once trying to make herself heard through solid rock and to be quiet enough that the rest of the castle couldn't hear her.

"Sawah!"

"Be brave, milady, we are here to rescue you!" A thump, and then Sir Didymus said in slightly fainter tones, "Brother Ludo, would you be so kind as to remove your estimable battering ram?"

"Sarah, are you okay?"

"Hoggle!" Sarah felt both sides of her throat trying to hug each other. "I'm fine, thanks to you guys."

Now Sarah realised she could hear lots of other voices, most of them very quiet, but definitely indicative of a large number of people outside. "Who's with you?" she tried to ask, but was drowned out by Ludo's roar and the grinding of stone on stone as the 'battering ram' rolled away from the door. She opened her mouth to repeat the question, but the words never made it past her lips, which seemed to have forgotten how to move. But that was fine, because her brain seemed to have been wiped completely blank. The only thing left was a quiet litany of "Oh my God...Oh my God..."

The Goblin King stood framed in the doorway.

Involuntarily, Sarah's mind jerked her back to the first time she'd seen him, standing in her father and stepmother's window. In fifteen years, he hadn't changed a bit. For one thing, he still knew how to make an entrance. The dust still hanging in the air even seemed to sparkle, and a breeze had kicked up out of nowhere, just enough to make his cape flutter impressively, but not enough to do more than ruffle his obviously difficult-to-maintain hair. And, of course, he still made her stomach attempt to do handsprings, kicking her lungs and knocking all of the wind out of them in the process. Sarah could feel her heart hammering like an overenthusiastic hummingbird, whether from fear, joy, or a mixture of both, she couldn't quite tell.

His eyes, those two different-coloured eyes, widened fractionally when they landed on Sarah, but his moment of surprise was quickly hidden by his trademark smirk. "Well, well, well. Look who it is."

Sarah forced her mouth shut and folded her arms across her chest. There was no way, no way she was going to let him get to her. Not this time. She was older now, and wiser, and – need she say it? – he had no power over her. The fact that her heart was still going a mile a minute had nothing to do with anything.

"Sarah. It's been too long."

Damn him. "Not long enough," Sarah retorted. That knowing little grin of his wasn't going to shake her, not this time. "I could have lived without ever seeing you again."

"Could you really?" Oh no, not the eyebrow. He would have to raise one eyebrow and give her that look that always made her feel about three inches tall. She responded by squaring her shoulders and throwing back her head. She wouldn't let him get to her this time.

"I happen to be very nearly married."

"Oh, really." The _As if that means anything_ wasn't spoken, but Sarah could feel it in the air, as surely as she could feel her formerly solid footing beginning to crumble under her. In a vain attempt to ignore the larger-than-life figure before her, she turned her attention to the crowd behind him. What looked like every single goblin the Queen had exiled from the Labyrinth were crowding the narrow streets. And standing at the fore, her friends and family. They'd come back for her. It was enough to make anyone (anyone, that is, who wasn't Sarah) want to hug even their worst enemy.

She finally let herself look back at the Goblin King, to see him regarding her with amusement. "Well, it's been smashing catching up with you," he said in response to her own raised eyebrow, "but I've got a castle to storm."

"It took you long enough to get here. I was about to storm it myself." Sarah didn't know why a treacherous smile was trying to take over her face. There was no way she was enjoying this. Simply no way.

"Oh, really?"

The voice froze Sarah dead in her thoughts, smile dying like a flower touched by frost. The mischievous sparkle sank much deeper into Jareth's – the Goblin King's, Sarah reminded herself, she had no reason to call him by his first name – eyes as he looked over her shoulder to the intruder on the scene. Sarah, nearly frying in the heat of the glare he was turning on the intruder, stepped quickly out of the way. She was spectacularly unsurprised to see the Queen standing in the hall, her illusion self now ridiculously tall and so monochromatic that she looked like a black-and-white photo come to life. Behind her, the handful of goblins she'd chosen to keep around looked as though they were seriously considering switching sides.

"Sarah, we are going to have to have a talk once this is over," the Queen said archly, her voice cold enough to make polar bears feel at home in the vaulted corridor. "Letting your enemies into the castle and practically offering them the run of the place is no way for a future Goblin Queen to behave."

"Hmm. I never thought I'd say this, but Linda's right, Sarah," Jareth – no! – whispered next to her ear. Sarah felt her cheeks burn, and she decided to pretend she hadn't heard a word.

"Would you stop talking to me like I'm three?" she snapped at her mother, and instantly regretted it as her lips sealed themselves firmly and magically together. "Mmf!"

Deprived of the power of speech, she found she could do nothing but watch.

* * *

Toby could almost feel the air compress as the two contestants for the Goblin Throne stared each other down. It felt as if everyone else in the room had suddenly become merely spectators, an audience for the scene about to unfold. The silence in the high-ceilinged hall nearly deafened him.

The Goblin King spoke first. "Surrender now, Linda." He sounded more serious than Toby had ever heard him. "I might be merciful."

"You want this kingdom?" the Queen spat between clenched teeth. "Then come take it."

"Go." It was one word, a command, and in response, the entire mob of goblins, an enraptured audience moments before, transformed into an army. As they tore past, Toby thought he heard the Goblin King say, "I want it, Linda. I want it very much."

The battle had begun.


	18. Chapter 18

It had really been too long, Jareth realised. He almost hadn't recognised Sarah. The girl was now a woman, and her shy prettiness had blossomed into confident beauty. Even covered in dirt, blood, and a truly hideous pink housecoat, he realised, she'd never looked so beautiful.

The opposite was true of Linda. Either she was pouring all of his – his! – magic into maintaining the illusion of herself and had gone over the top, or she was losing control of his magic.

Which didn't seem to be the case. The first wave of goblins were standing frozen as if they'd been dipped in water and then dropped into liquid nitrogen. More hurried to fill the gaps, but Jareth could already tell that this war wouldn't be decided by and army. It all came down to a contest of power – power, and the ability to wield it.

In which case, Linda had the upper hand. Jareth found himself in the unenviable position of trying to take on a devious and underhanded enemy after years without practice. A few things gave him hope: it was, after all, his magic that both of them were using, and he had much more experience with it. Linda, also, was rattled by his mere appearance, and would be more so if he could continue to keep her off-balance.

And Sarah was here. And she hadn't slapped him yet.

Might as well begin, then.

* * *

The Queen was in the middle of freezing a goblin who had bravely (or foolishly) attacked her directly, when she stopped dead, her illusion-self wavering like a mirage on a hot desert. With glacial slowness, she turned on the spot to face her opponent.

The Goblin King's grin was like an offensive weapon. As Toby watched, the Queen shook again, and her face momentarily betrayed something that might have been fear. But it was gone in less than a heartbeat, and she flung out a hand.

Toby felt it in his bones, the force of it taking his breath away. Several goblins toppled, and Sarah, who appeared to be wrestling with an armour-clad goblin, grimaced. But the Goblin King just laughed.

"Linda, Linda, Linda. Is that the best you can do?"

The Queen's hair began to coil and uncoil like Medusa's snakes. "Don't you dare call me that," she snapped.

The Goblin King raised an eyebrow, and the Queen shivered. "Whyever not? It's your name, isn't it?"

Toby missed the next part of the exchange, as an enormous axe blade skimmed past his nose and swung up into the air. He looked up, only to see it coming down for another stroke. As he scrambled out of the way, he turned around to see who – or what – was waving an axe at him, especially one half as tall as he was.

"Oh, no," he mumbled.

* * *

Sarah whirled around when she heard Toby's shout, not the wisest course of action. Luckily, Hoggle brained the goblin she'd been holding at arm's length before it had a chance to take advantage of her distraction.

"Sarah, what're you – oh."

Sarah couldn't find anything to say either. She'd thought that Hoggle had damaged the gigantic robotic guardian enough during their fight at the gates of the Goblin City that it wouldn't run any longer. Apparently, judging by the fact that it was even now clumsily walking through the wreckage of the castle doors, this was not the case.

Sarah glanced towards the clear spot in the hall where the Queen and Jareth were fighting, hoping to get a clue as to who had raised the metal monster. Judging by the triumphant smile on the Queen's face, it wasn't on their side.

"Damn," Sarah muttered. "Guys!"

Ludo, on the other side of the hall, dropped the goblin he'd been good-naturedly dangling upside down. The stick the goblin had been holding broke neatly in two, and the little biting monster on the end latched itself neatly onto its owner's behind. Sir Didymus, who had apparently been duelling himself vigorously while several bemused goblins watched, delivered a smart blow to each of his onlookers and leaped astride Ambrosius, who promptly ran from the now enraged goblins. They both reached Sarah at about the same time.

"You called, milady?" Sir Didymus inquired, as he dismounted.

"Sawah need help?" Ludo asked eagerly.

"Yeah. We've got to stop that thing," Sarah said, as the aforementioned thing swept ten goblins out of its way with its axe and let out a metallic, thundering roar. "I'm just not sure how."

"There'll be someone in the head controlling it," Hoggle volunteered.

"Then we've got to knock its head off somehow to get at the controls. But how are we going to do that?"

Ludo shrugged, and then took a few steps backwards as all eyes turned to him.

* * *

Irene took the entrance of the metal monster as her cue to leave the main hall. After all, there were all these convenient little halls down which countless goblins had already disappeared. And – though she hated to admit it – she wasn't much use in the middle of a battle. She was, in fact, in the way. All in all, now seemed like an excellent time to make her exit.

There was one small problem with this otherwise perfectly reasonable plan. She had no idea where she was going.

Irene muttered a word she'd never let her children hear her say when the latest hall ended in yet another fork. "This whole damn place is a maze!"

She didn't spend much time deciding which way to go, however, since the sounds of a fight came echoing down the corridor to her right. "All right," she said under her breath. "Not that way, then."

A few steps along the left-hand hall, Irene came to a dead end. A large, wooden door stood smugly shut before her, and she could swear the lock was grinning at her. When she pushed on it, it refused to budge.

 _I'm not going to panic,_ Irene told herself. _I'm going to deal with this calmly and rationally. Just like everything before it._

The shouting and metallic noises were getting closer.

And then, the entire hall began to shake. Several large chunks of rock fell out of the ceiling, and a few "oof"s from the hall behind Irene revealed that the combatants had lost to the rocks. They'd probably have devilish headaches later.

Irene bit back a scream when two armour-clad goblins, one carrying a pike, the other and axe, rounded the corner and came face-to-face with her. _They might be on my side, inasmuch as I have a side..._

Then they started to point at her. And shout. And the smaller one was pointing that pike right at her.

As they charged towards her, Irene sidestepped the pike, then gave it a push. The goblin holding it spun like a top, knocking into its partner and sending them both sprawling with a giant-sized clatter of armour. Irene stepped over them and picked up the axe, not remembering to say "Thank you" until she'd already raised the heavy thing to hit the door with. The goblin she'd taken it from only groaned in response.

At the first blow, the door shuddered, and the lock shouted, "I will never surrender! Threaten me all you like!" Irene nearly dropped the axe at hearing a lock speak. It seemed that no matter what she saw, this place always had something up its sleeve to surprise her.

"Who said this was a threat?" Irene asked the lock, using her best 'mom' voice.

"I thought...uh..." the lock backtracked.

"This isn't a threat," Irene said, hefting the axe for a second blow. "This is a promise."

There was a click as the lock unlocked. The door swung gently open as Irene pushed it. At first, it was too dark to see anything, but once the door opened enough to let some light in, it gleamed off of more metal than in the rest of the castle put together.

"Oh, my," Irene whispered.

She'd found the armoury.

* * *

The cascade of rocks had neatly knocked the head off of the metal giant, but they'd also put a sizeable dent in the Goblin King's forces. Sarah sincerely hoped that nobody was too seriously hurt.

"Great work, Ludo!" she congratulated her friend.

"Huh. Yeah, great. Just one problem – there's no one at the controls!" Hoggle shouted. "What's keeping it going, and how're we supposed to stop it?"

"We've got to get somebody up there," Sarah mused. 'But how?"

"Sarah?"

"Toby!" seeing the look on Toby's face made butterflies of fright begin to flutter somewhere under Sarah's lungs. "What's wrong?"

"Other than everything?" Toby looked around and quickly stepped out of the way of a blow form a goblin in what looked like a leather-and-chain-mail skirt. "Sarah, I don't know where Mom is, and you know what she's like. What if she met up with some of these angry little – ow!" Toby shouted as the goblin's sword found its mark in his leg. Sir Didymus, apparently glad of having somebody to fight, charged at the goblin, and they began an energetic and rather noisy duel.

"I'm sure she's fine," Sarah tried to reassure her little brother. "She made it this far – what the...?"

Everyone, including Sir Didymus, who received a few hits for his distraction, turned to see what Sarah was looking at. She couldn't say she blamed them. Irene, dirty, ragged, and in a state of general disarray, had just re-entered the fray. And somewhere in the castle, she'd managed to find a cannon.

"What was she going to do with that?" Toby asked, clearly confused.

"Huh, she can barely push it," Hoggle scoffed.

"Heyyy, that's it!" Sarah said, as something dawned on her. "Those things shoot little round goblins, right? We can shoot one of those into the robot!"

"I don't see any cannonballs," Sir Didymus said, as he parried his opponent's thrust.

"Hmm, that's right..." Sarah bit her lip. They'd come too far to give up now, and she was sure that something would present itself. "What could we shoot at it?"

Sir Didymus knocked his opponent out with a flourish of his staff. "I volunteer!"

"Are you sure?" Sarah asked. Suddenly, the plan didn't seem quite so clever. "I don't want you to get hurt."

Sir Didymus drew himself up to his full height (still not much taller than Sarah's knees) and puffed himself up proudly. "Are you saying that this is too dangerous a quest?"

"Well, it's a cannon -"

"I insist that you allow me to do this, milady." He struck a pose that Sarah assumed he thought looked heroic. "For the good of the kingdom."

Sarah sighed. "Just be careful."

* * *

She had to smother her giggles when, minutes later, her small knight flew through the air, legs oscillating wildly, and a battle cry of sorts tearing from his open mouth. It was too serious to laugh about.

But still.

There was one heart-stopping moment where Sarah thought he wasn't going to make it, but her fears were alleviated when Sir Didymus found a foothold and scrambled up into the metal guardian's control booth. It swung its axe at him in an enthusiastic but not particularly well-aimed attack.

"How're you doing?" Sarah called up.

"I can't quite seem to figure out how to work it, milady," Sir Didymus answered sheepishly. Below, ad spider-like goblin squeaked and scurried out of the way of the robot's descending foot.

"Just push buttons. Sooner or later, it'll break," Hoggle advised the knight.

There was a flurry of motion from atop the advancing robot, where Sir Didymus was apparently following these directions, and then a plume of thick black smoke rose from the metal monster's neck. "It's goin', all right!" Hoggle shouted, shuffling slightly so that Irene was between him and the robot. Sarah had to shake her head. Some things never changed.

"Get out of there!" she called up to Sir Didymus.

"How, milady?"

"Just jump!"

The words had barely left Sarah's mouth before Sir Didymus hit the floor. He was not a moment too soon, since a scant few seconds later, sparks flew from the robot's neck and it rocked on its heels.

A cheer rose from the invading forces, and a small group of goblins swept Sir Didymus up onto their shoulders. But their relief was short-lived, as the robot shook itself rather like a dog, and then, regardless of the flames now crackling merrily where its head used to be, kept coming, laying into the battlefield with its axe.

Sarah managed to suppress a scream of frustration and just a little bit of fear, but a squeak still leaked out. "It's unstoppable!"

"I guess we'll have to break it down completely," Toby sighed.

"Why would you do that?" Irene asked, and Sarah groaned. "When you can just pull the plug?"

Sarah opened her mouth to calmly scream at her stepmother that it didn't have a plug, that was sort of the point of being run on magic, when a flash of insight momentarily blinded her. Turning her back on the advancing robot, she found herself again watching the magical battle between the Queen and Jareth. The victorious smile on the Queen's face was more terrifying than the metal beast she'd summoned.

Sarah couldn't believe it had taken her this long. _Pull the plug..._

She took a few steps toward the silent war of spells, and then broke into a run.

* * *

Jareth was not losing. This was a setback, true, but he was not losing.

He didn't understand it. Linda was pouring all of her energies into maintaining her now very stretched-looking appearance and the guardian she'd called up. So how had he not won yet?

"Linda, you're not...concentrating," he said, using the most intimidating tone he could muster, at the same time as he lashed out at her. She flinched, her illusion flickering, but he thought that was as much from his use of her name as from his spell.

He was proven right moments later when she laughed calmly and without real humour. "On you? Oh, I'm so sorry, but you see, I don't have to."

"Linda, you're really overacting this role."

She flinched again, and scowled. "Hmmph. Just keep trying to fight me with magic, _Goblin King,_ " she sneered. Jareth answered with a sneer of his own, one he knew was better and much more effective than hers. Linda's face froze up again, twisting into something that resembled one of the goblins she disliked. "You..." She seemed at a loss for words. "Get out! You have no power here anymore!"

The line sounded familiar. Oh, yes...it was nearly identical to what Sarah'd said when she left. Would that damn book never leave him alone? _You have no power over me..._ Could he ever forget?

A slow smile crept across Linda's face, and then that face melted into another, less severe one. Sarah Williams, age fifteen, stood before him.

"That's right, you lost," she said, as if just remembering. "You let your feelings get in the way. I wonder, will you do the same again?"

No, he couldn't forget. But maybe he didn't need to. Maybe what he needed to do was remember.

Linda's disguise shattered as his blow hit her, and he was a little surprised to see how haggard she looked. Thirty years of bearing a constant grudge had really taken their toll. But almost as soon as one illusion disappeared, she'd created another too-perfect self to hide behind. It was rather pathetic, really.

She bounced back quickly, though, flinging his own spell back at him. "Go on trying to fight me with magic," she repeated. "It's your magic I'm using. You're just making me stronger."

"Really." He couldn't help but smile. "Then I don't need it to win."

"What?" Jareth took it as a compliment that for just a fraction of a second, fear skittered across her fabulously fake ocean-blue eyes. "Oh, really. Care to explain?"

"You're the ruler of the Labyrinth, aren't you? The one in charge of its twists and turns. The one with the magic. And I'm the one who just defeated that Labyrinth to make my way to your castle beyond the Goblin City..." 'The child' didn't seem to fit here. "...to take back the princess you have stolen." Much better. "I don't need magic to defeat you. I only need words."

If there had been colour in Linda's face, it would have drained away. "No – you can't – that's not how the story goes -"

"Oh, but it is. Plucky heroine – or hero – saves day from corrupt ruler, tra la la, tea and buns for everyone. And you, ever so thoughtfully, cast me as the hero."

Now Linda looked desperate. Her blows whizzed about with reckless abandon, and Jareth laughed. She might be able to use his power, steal his spells to make her stronger, but she'd do well to remember whose power it was in the first place and wonder if it also worked the other way around.

Linda's lips narrowed until her mouth resembled a bloody gash. Evidently, she'd realised her random attacks were playing right into Jareth's hands. She raised both hands, and flung her head back dramatically.

And stood still.

The whole room seemed to be holding its breath.

Then Jareth realised what was happening. She was pulling all the available magic in the room in to herself, concentrating for one decisive blow. Somewhere behind Jareth, the gate guard stopped in mid-swing. Locks and doorknockers fell silent, illusions vanished, and somewhere in the depths of the castle, the water pump stopped dead. Jareth tried a simple charm and found that he was, like that night when Linda had stolen his throne, utterly without magic.

Best to get this over with, then.

As Jareth opened his mouth to say the words, someone's hand touched his shoulder. He turned, ready to blast whoever it was for interrupting him – and found himself speechless.

Sarah was looking back at him.

"Let's finish this, shall we?" she said, turning to face her mother. Suddenly feeling like nothing was beyond him, not even moving the stars, Jareth reached out and grasped her hand.

Linda finally looked back at him, and her expression of triumphant hate vanished as it was replaced by one of shocked betrayal. "You -" she began, but it was too late.

Sarah and Jareth said the words together.

"You have no power over me!"

The Queen fell.


	19. Chapter 19

"An oubliette, huh?" Sarah asked, as she watched the cleanup of the dust and rubble that now decorated the main hall. A team of goblins had already patched the doors, and a new pair were being made somewhere in the now obviously-inhabited city. "And here I was planning to search the dungeons. I forgot all about the oubliettes."

"Then they serve their purpose," Jareth said. "No! Get that cannon out of here!" He pinched the bridge of his nose between two gloved fingers as the goblins he'd been ordering around smashed said cannon into a doorway, neatly taking out a few stones. Sarah smothered a laugh behind her hand.

After the Queen had fallen, it hadn't taken the goblins she'd commanded long to surrender. Sarah wondered if there was an increment of time short enough to measure how long it had taken. And now, the Goblin King had his throne back, the goblins had their city back, Sarah and Irene had Toby back, and everything was right back to normal. There was only one problem.

Linda Williams lay sprawled across a bench that had been set up in the hall. She still hadn't woken up, not since she'd lost the magic she'd stolen.

Sarah couldn't believe it, but even after all the woman had put her through, she felt...guilty. Like it was her fault that her mother had gone completely mad. Like she shouldn't have sided with Jareth. Like she shouldn't have helped to bring the Queen down. Sarah didn't actually regret any of it, but looking at the mother she'd lost and always wanted, lying like a discarded doll, she felt she really ought to.

"What's going to happen to her now?" Sarah asked, realising she felt sorry for her mother, sorry for the proud woman she'd once been, sorry that what little good there'd been about her had disappeared so quickly. She didn't want revenge on Linda Williams any more than she wanted her back as a mother. But it wasn't fair to do anything more to the already-broken actress.

Jareth barely spared the dark-haired figure a glance. "She should be turned over to the Lords and Ladies...but I see no reason to bother them with trifles. There's always those oh-so-effective oubliettes."

"No." Even Sarah was surprised by the harshness in her voice, and toned it down a bit. "Send her home."

"Now, why would you want a thing like that?" Once, Sarah might have flinched back from that intimidating inquisitive stare, that one dramatically raised eyebrow. But instead, she folded her arms and raised an eyebrow to match.

"She is my mother, after all. And I don't think she deserves to be locked away and forgotten. She's been through enough already."

"Sarah, Sarah, she did it to herself. Have you forgotten how she tried to use you, me, your brother, your friends...?"

"No..." But the moment of uncertainty passed. "She needs to learn how to care about other people, and she can't do that here. She needs a chance to try to get by in the real world. Otherwise, you know she'd find a way out of whatever oubliette you'd put her in and come back looking for revenge. Again." Sarah may have been wrong, but she thought she saw a hint of a smile beginning in the corners of the Goblin King's mouth. "She'll whine, she'll complain, but in the end it'd be best if she just went home."

"Hmm. You may have a point." It wasn't so much resigned as it was amused, and Sarah found herself waiting for the catch. She didn't have long to wait. Jareth turned to face her, and the amusement disappeared from his voice as his face turned serious. "But she did trade herself for you, Sarah. It wouldn't be fair for her to go free without someone to take her place."

Sarah would have had to be blind – or blond – not to see what was coming next. She felt a blush beginning its slow rise to her cheeks as Jareth continued, staring straight into her eyes as if trying to decode something written there. "I'm not going to beg you this time, Sarah. Stay with me."

For a moment – just a moment – though she would never admit it to anyone but herself, Sarah found herself seriously considering it. Maybe she had been in love with him, maybe she did want to escape her life, maybe it would be nice to be treated like a princess...

...but...

...but she'd grown up. She could handle her life, she didn't have to escape it. It would be nice to be treated like a princess all the time, but it would get old fast. And as for being in love with the Goblin King...

...well, she could deal with that later.

"No," she finally said, after what felt like an eternity of struggling to think.

"No?" Jareth repeated. "Sarah, think what I'm offering you."

 _Your dreams._ "No." There was something very freeing about saying it. "It's tempting, but no. My dreams have changed, and they're not about running away any more. If I want them, I'll go get them, instead of wishing and hoping someone will turn up to grant them for me. This..." She looked around at the castle beyond the goblin city, and realised that she'd much rather have her little old house, bad wiring, creaky floors, and all. "It's too easy."

"I see." Instead of the disappointment she'd expected, Sarah saw in the Goblin King's eyes a sparkle, of mischief or perhaps something else, something she couldn't put a name to. "You want a challenge."

"Yes," Sarah answered simply, knowing it was true. "So I'm going home."

The expression on Jareth's face was inscrutable. "This isn't goodbye, Sarah," he warned her.

"Oh, I don't know," she answered. "For now, at least, it is."

* * *

"You will call?" Hoggle asked, a tad more gruffly than usual, and Sarah guessed he was holding back tears. "Should you need us?"

"Of course!" A sudden mental image of Disney's Snow White planting a kiss on Grumpy flitted through her mind. "But please don't wait for me to call. I got so caught up in everything last time that I didn't leave enough time for you guys. I promise it won't happen again."

"You're quite sure, milady?" Sir Didymus said anxiously.

"Absolutely." And she would, Sarah told herself. Standing here, at the edge of the Labyrinth, looking back at her friends, she knew she'd do her best to keep in touch. She'd all but forgotten how much they meant to her, and she wasn't going to let that happen again.

"Wait!" Toby ran up, looking shaken and out of breath. "Sorry, just got away – these fuzzy red things wanted me to party. I only just got out of there with my head!" He stopped, catching his breath, and then looked down at his toes, which kicked at a rock. "I just – I just want to say thanks. If it wasn't for you guys, I guess I'd still be locked in that dungeon, or out here pounding on these doors." He was spared having to express further sentiments by a passing pixie, which in grabbing at his hair provided a distraction. 'Well, uh..." An awkward smile twitched across his face. "I'm going to miss you guys," he admitted.

"I shall miss you too, noble Toby!" Sir Didymus cried, and was echoed by an assenting mumble of "Take care of yerself, kid," from Hoggle, and "Toby fwend," from Ludo.

"Toby? We've got to get a move on," Irene said, coming up behind her son.

"I'm just saying goodbye, Mom," Toby replied.

"Oh, yes, I haven't said my farewells, either," Irene mused. "Thank you for getting my daughter and son – and me – out of all of these ridiculous scrapes. I can't say I'm not glad to see the back of this maze...but I suppose I'll miss you all as well."

 _Touching_ , Sarah thought wryly. But then, Irene had never been one for huge displays of emotion. Her discomfort was made more obvious as she steered Toby away.

"Well, farewell, milady," Sir Didymus said, whiskers drooping. Ambrosius barked softly as well.

"Goodbye?" Ludo asked, looking so forlorn that Sarah couldn't bring herself to say it.

"No, not really. More like..." She glanced quickly over her shoulder to her waiting stepmother. "See you later."

"See you later?"

"Yeah. See you later."

"And should you need us..." Hoggle reminded her, not looking at her face.

"Don't worry. I'll call."

Hoggle was taken completely by surprise when Sarah leaned down and grabbed him in a hug. "Awh, Sarah," he grumbled, obviously not half as upset as he pretended to be.

"Remember to drop by every once in a while," Sarah said.

"Fine, just let go!"

Sarah did so, and straightened up, not quite ready to leave her friends again. But if she didn't go now, she knew, she wouldn't go at all. It was time.

Sarah turned, and walked away from the Labyrinth.

* * *

"Um, your majesty?"

"Hmm?" Jareth looked up from the crystal he'd been absent-mindedly playing with, to see a long-nosed, almost spherical goblin with a harried expression on its face standing before his throne. "What is it?"

"Pardon the intrusion, but wasn't that dark-haired woman the one you've been after for so long?"

"Sarah? Yes," Jareth answered, and went back to playing with the crystal. However, the goblin didn't seem to take the hint and leave.

"Then why on Earth did you let her get away like that? You could have insisted she stay, could have sealed the Labyrinth, could have -" The inquisitive goblin was cut off by a wave from his King.

"She'll be back."

"But how do you know?"

"She came back twice already, didn't she?" The Goblin King gently tossed the crystal up in the air, then, catching it, looked through it to where Sarah and her family were climbing through the mirror entrance to the netherworld between reality and fantasy. "Of her own accord. And," he added, a smile playing across his face, "she never did renounce her claim on my throne."

* * *

_One month later_

"Where is that girl? Irene whispered to her husband for the third time in five minutes.

"Give her some time," Robert replied patiently, also in a whisper. "Sarah'll get here."

"But she's not here yet!" Irene pointed out, her frustration beginning to show through. "She's already late -"

"Mom, calm down," Toby said. "She'll be here."

Unfortunately, it was just then that the house lights and music dimmed, and the spotlights came up on the curtain concealing the stage.

"Okay, now she's really late," Toby had to admit.

"I knew it! They won't let her in, you know, if she comes once the doors close," Irene whispered angrily. "Can that girl not show up to anything on time?"

There was a quiet, polite commotion from the seats behind the Williams family, a few shushes and whispered "Sorry!"s, and Sarah slid into the seat beside Toby.

"Sorry I'm late," she said quietly, and was met with more shushes. Dropping her voice to a whisper, she continued. "Has the show started yet?"

"You're just in time," Robert answered her. "Where's Alex?"

"He wasn't ready when I went to pick him up, and made it quite clear that he had no intention of getting ready to come and see a play with my family – much less Shakespeare."

"So what'd you do?" Toby asked eagerly."

"Told him in no uncertain terms exactly what he could do with his engagement ring," Sarah answered nonchalantly, and Irene gasped, drawing further shushing.

"But, Sarah, you two have been seeing each other for so long..."

"That just means this was too long in coming. I'm not sorry to see him go. I was only dating him to begin with to prove to myself I wasn't in love with someone else."

"Someone else?" Robert turned curious eyes on Sarah, who shushed him.

"Dad, the play's starting!"

As the curtain rose, Toby gripped the armrest between him and Sarah as if it were a life preserver. She understood why as, onstage, Puck slipped out from behind a tree, mischief in his eyes and leaves threaded into his tangled blond hair, to begin the play. She was proud of Toby for challenging his fears, but it looked like _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ still got to him.

Sarah, however, was perfectly content to let herself slip into the fantasy world woven by Shakespeare's words – at least, until realisation of where she'd seen a familiar face jolted her out of the dream.

"Is that..." she whispered to her family beside her.

"Of course, Sarah, didn't you see the playbill? Her name's splashed all over it. Everyone's celebrating the triumphant return of Linda Avery to the theatre." Irene sniffed with obvious disapproval.

"Dad, did you know about this?"

Robert only smiled. "It's like you and this mysterious 'someone else'. I don't have to prove anything to her." Sitting back, he pointed out, "Besides, she is quite a good actress. You could almost believe she is a fairy Queen."


End file.
